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ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



""* 




""" 




The 
Religious T/ife of 
Famous Americans 












By 

LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D. 

Author of ♦' The King's Stewards " and 
*♦ Soul-Winning Stories " 




» 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 Nassau Street 
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 












Two Oooies 3ere»ved 

SEP 20 1904 
jftooyil£ht Entry 

CLASS (X. XXo. No. 

COPY 



COPY B 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



BURR PRINTING HOUSE 
NEW YORK 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 3 

II. RUFUS CHOATE I7 

III. SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE ,. . . 29 

IV. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 4I 

V. JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD .... 53 

VI. WILLIAM MCKINLEY 65 

VH. EMMA WILLARD TJ 

VIII. DANIEL WEBSTER 89 

IX. MARY LYON lOI 

X. HENRY CLAY II3 

XL STONEWALL JACKSON 125 

XII. WASHINGTON IRVING 137 

XIII. CYRUS WEST FIELD I5I 

XIV. ROBERT EDWARD LEE 163 

XV. ANDREW JACKSON 1 75 

XVI. ELISHA KENT KANE 187 

XVII. ABIGAIL ADAMS IQQ 

XVIII. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT . . . .211 

XIX. FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD . . . 223 

XX. BENJAMIN HARRISON 237 



A FIRST WORD WITH THE READER. 

Life is ever the greatest teacher. The story 
of great men is of absorbing interest, not only 
to youth but to thinking men at every stage of 
their Hves. The poHtical biographer is not 
likely to make much of the personal religious 
character of the man the story of whose 
political honor and ambitious career he 
seeks to narrate. So that it often happens that 
a public man whose religious life was most de- 
vout and who drew the nourishment for his 
most splendid deeds from the hidden springs 
of worship and communion with God, stands 
in the eye of the multitude as an unknown 
quantity religiously. It has been the purpose 
of the author in these chapters to present in the 
case of the score of men and women whose 
lives are studied the religious side of their 
career. Such information has been sought 
from every quarter available, and is presented 
in a way which it is hoped will picture the 
truthful and helpful Christian personality of 
each character portrayed. 

Louis Albert Banks. 

West Nyack, N. Y., July 8, 1904. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



CHAPTER I. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Among the interesting things shown in the 
Lincoln Museum in the Capital City of the 
nation is an old copy of the Bible. No one 
can look at its well-thumbed pages without 
being assured that it has been much studied. 
If you will look on the inside of the cover, 
you will find these words, written by the 
famous man who once owned it : "A. Lincoln, 
his own book." 

Throughout his life, Abraham Lincoln was 
a devout student of the Bible. In his young 
manhood, when writing to his brother about 
his father's sickness, he uses these words : "He 
notes the fall of the sparrow and numbers the 
hairs of our heads." In all his early speeches, 
both at the bar and on the political stump, he 



4 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

quoted from the Bible more than from any 
other book, and he kept this up until the end 
of his life. Indeed, after he came to the Presi- 
dency of the United States and upon his shoul- 
ders were laid such heavy burdens, his religious 
life was evidently greatly intensified and deep- 
ened. About a year before the tragic end of 
his career on earth, he wrote to his friend, 
Joshua Speed : ''I am profitably engaged in 
reading the Bible. Take all of this book upon 
reason that you can, and the balance on faith, 
and you will live and die a better man." 

After the Emancipation Proclamation, the 
colored people of Baltimore presented Mr. 
Lincoln with a handsome copy of the Scrip- 
tures. He responded in these words : *'In 
regard to the great book, I have only to say 
that it is the best gift which God has given 
to man. All the good from the Saviour of 
the world is communicated through this book." 

Mr. Lincoln's faith in God, his confidence 
in him as the author of the Bible, is brought 
out in strongest light in his second inaugural 
address. This tremendous paragraph stands as 
an immortal testimony to the great man's reli- 
ance and faith in God and his Word : 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. '5 

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the 
same God, and each invokes his aid against 
the other. It may seem strange that any man 
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other 
men's faces; but let us judge not that we be 
not judged. The prayers of both could not 
be answered. That of neither has been an- 
swered fully. The Almighty has his own pur- 
poses. 'Woe unto the world because of of- 
fences, for it must needs be that offences come : 
but woe to the man by whom the offence 
cometh.' If we shall suppose that American 
slavery is one of these offences, which in the 
providence of God must needs come, but which, 
having continued through his appointed time, 
he now wills to remove, and that he gives to 
both North and South this terrible war as 
the woe due to those by whom the offence 
came, shall we discern therein any departure 
from those divine attributes which the be- 
lievers in a living God always ascribe to him? 
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that 
this mighty scourge of war may soon pass 
away. Yet, if God wills that it shall continue 
until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two 



6 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
with the lash shall be paid with another drawn 
with the sword; as was said three thousand 
years ago, so it still must be said, 'The judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether.' " 

One of the strong writers of that day, com- 
menting on the Christian spirit and faith 
breathed from Lincoln's second inaugural, said : 
"Since the days of Christ's Sermon on the 
Mount, where is the speech of emperor, king, 
or ruler which can compare with this ? May we 
not, without irreverence, say that passages of 
this address are worthy of that holy Book 
which daily he read, and from which, during 
his long days of trial, he had drawn inspiration 
and guidance ? Where else but from the teach- 
ings of the Son of God could he have drawn 
the Christian charity which pervades the last 
sentence, in which he so unconsciously describes 
his own moral nature: 'With malice toward 
none, with charity for all, with firmness in the 
right as God gives us to see the right' ? No 
other state paper in American annals, not even 
Washington's farewell address, has made so 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 7 

deep an impression upon the people as this. 
. . . This paper in its solemn recognition 
of the justice of Almighty God reminds us 
of the words of the old Hebrew prophets.'* 

Abraham Lincoln had a most devout faith in 
prayer. General James F. Rusling gives a most 
interesting account of a call he and General 
Daniel E. Sickles made upon him after the bat- 
tle of Gettysburg. During the conversation 
General Sickles asked if the President and the 
Cabinet had not been anxious about the bat- 
tle? Mr. Lincoln replied that the Cabinet had, 
but he had not; and he then went on to make 
a confession that in the very pinch and stress 
of the Gettysburg campaign he had gone to 
the Almighty in secret prayer. He said he 
told the Lord this was his country, and the 
war was his war, but that we could not stand 
another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville ; 
and that he then and there made a solemn vow 
with his Maker that if he would stand by us 
at Gettysburg, he would stand by him; and 
then he added: "And he did, and I will!" He 
said that after he had prayed he could not 
explain how it was, but a sweet comfort had 
crept into his soul that God Almighty had 



8 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

taken the whole business there into his hands, 
and we were bound to win at Gettysburg. 

Mr. Lincoln returned again to the subject 
of prayer in that same conversation with 
Sickles and Rusling, saying that he did not 
want it repeated then ; some might laugh ; but it 
was a solemn fact that he prayed mightily over 
both Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and verily be- 
lieved our Heavenly Father was somehow 
going to take care of the American Republic. 
At the time of this conversation President Lin- 
coln did not know that Vicksburg had already 
been captured. 

No public man ever more clearly empha- 
sized his faith in God in his public addresses, 
as well as in his private conversation and let- 
ters, than did Abraham Lincoln. When he 
started from Springfield, 111., to take his jour- 
ney to Washington to become President, a 
large number of the citizens of Springfield, 
together with his neighbors and friends, gath- 
ered at the station to bid him farewell. Stand- 
ing on the platform of the car, and speaking 
with deep emotion, he said : 

"My friends, no one not in my position can 
realize the sadness I feel at this parting. To 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9 

this people I owe all that I am. Here I have 
lived more than a quarter of a century. Here 
my children were born and here one of them 
lies buried. I know not how soon I shall see 
you again. I go to assume a task more difficult 
than that which has devolved upon any other 
man since the days of Washington. He never 
would have succeeded except for the aid of 
divine Providence, upon which he at all times 
relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without 
the same divine blessing which sustained him ; 
and on the same Almighty Being I place my 
reliance for support. And I hope you, my 
friends, will all pray that I may receive the 
divine assistance, without which I cannot suc- 
ceed, but with which success is certain." 

The journey which Lincoln took to Wash- 
ington will always be historic. At every station 
the people gathered and at every stop Mr. 
Lincoln spoke, and the key-note of all his 
speeches was his faith in God and his hope for 
the divine guidance. In his address at Colum- 
bus, Ohio, he said : "I turn then to God for sup- 
port, who has never forsaken the people." At 
Steuben ville he said : "Nothing shall be want- 
ing on my part, if sustained by the American 



lo RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

people and God." At Buffalo, N. Y. : *'I am 
trusting in that Supreme Being who has never 
forsaken this favored land." At Albany he 
said : "1 still have confidence that the Almighty, 
the Maker of the universe, will bring us through 
this." At Newark, N. J., he said : ''I am sure, 
however, that I have not the ability to do any- 
thing unaided of God." At Trenton he said : 
"I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a 
humble instrument in the hands of the Al- 
mighty and of this his most chosen people as 
the chosen instrument, also in the hands of 
the Almighty, of perpetuating the object of 
that great struggle." At Philadelphia, where 
the last address was made before reaching 
Washington, he used these words : "I have said 
nothing but that I am willing to live by, and, 
if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die by." 
While these utterances are sufficient to prove 
beyond all doubt Mr. Lincoln's reverent faith 
in God, it is certainly a matter of comfort to 
all sincere Christian hearts that we have abun- 
dant evidence that during his Presidency of 
the United States Mr. Lincoln came into a 
definite, personal relation with Jesus Christ as 
his Saviour and Lord. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. ii 

Mr. Noah Brooks, who was a bosom friend 
of Lincoln, says that, while he never tried to 
draw anything like a statement of his religious 
views from him, Mr. Lincoln freely expressed 
to him **his hope of a blessed immortality 
through Jesus Christ." 

Mr. Frank Carpenter, the painter, who had 
unusual opportunities for private conversation 
with Mr. Lincoln, relates that a lady in the 
service of the Christian Commission called on 
Mr. Lincoln on a number of occasions on the 
business of the Commission. On one occasion 
their conversation turned to the subject of 
religion. The President asked this good 
woman to give her views as to what constituted 
a religious experience, and she readily con- 
sented. After she had clearly set forth her 
views, Mr. Lincoln responded as follows: "If 
what you have told me is really a correct view 
of this subject, I think I can say with 
sincerity that I hope that I am a Christian. 
I had lived until my boy Willie died without 
fully realizing these things. That blow over- 
whelmed me. It showed me my weakness as 
I never felt it before, and if I can take what 
you have stated as a test, I think I can safely 



12 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

say that I know something of that change of 
which you speak. I will further add that it 
has been my intention for some time at a suit- 
able opportunity to make a public religious 
confession." 

On another occasion, speaking to Mr. Noah 
Brooks, to whom reference has already been 
made, Mr. Lincoln said : "When any church 
would inscribe over its altars as its sole quali- 
fication for membership the Saviour's con- 
densed statement of the substance of both law 
and gospel. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' 
that church will I join with all my heart and 
all my soul.'* 

Colonel Henry Watterson, in his remarkable 
lecture on Abraham Lincoln, has this eloquent 
paragraph expressing his faith in the divine 
guidance and inspiration of Abraham Lincoln, 
in which all Christians may unite. Mr. Wat- 
terson says of him : 

"Born as lowly as the Son of God, reared 
in penury and squalor, with no gleam of light 
nor fair surroundings, it was reserved for this 
strange being, late in life, without fame or 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 13 

name or seeming preparation, to be snatched 
from obscurity, raised to a supreme command 
at a supreme moment, and intrusted with the 
destiny of a nation. Where did Shakespeare 
get his genius? Where did Mozart get his 
music? Whose hands smote the lyre of the 
Scottish plowman and stayed the life of the 
German priest? God alone; and as surely as 
these were raised by God, inspired of God was 
Abraham Lincoln. A thousand years hence, 
no story, no tragedy, no epic poem will be filled 
with greater wonder than that which tells of 
his life and death. If Lincoln was not inspired 
of God, then there is no such thing on earth 
as special providence or the interposition of 
divine power in the affairs of men." 



RUFUS CHOATE 




RUFUS CHOATE. 



CHAPTER IL 

RUFUS CHOATE. 

RuFus Choate, one of the greatest of 
America's lawyers as well as one of her most 
famous orators, seems to have been born into 
the world with a thirst for knowledge, and with 
his first reading came the Bible. In the village 
library of the little town of Ipswich, Mass., 
where he spent his childhood, he found such 
books as ''RoUin's Ancient History," '^Jo- 
sephus," 'Tlutarch," and these and many other 
books of a similar nature he read before he 
was ten years old. During all these early years 
the Bible was read and re-read with more than 
ordinary thoughtfulness, and early in the War 
of 1 812 he made what he thought was the 
great discovery of an undoubted prophecy of 
Napoleon Bonaparte in the book of Daniel. 



i8 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

He was at the same time an attentive and criti- 
cal hearer of sermons, even when the minister 
was dull. ''When about nine years old," says 
his brother, ''he took us all by surprise one 

Sabbath noon, by saying, 'Mr. (naming 

the preacher) had better mind what he says 
about James (the apostle), even James,' re- 
peating the words emphatically. The minister 
had been quoting Paul, and added, 'even James 
says, For what is your life ?' The remark went 
to show us (the family) not only that he had 
been attentive to what had been said (which we 
had not been), but that he saw an objection 
to the comparison, implied, at least, between 
the two apostles, both of whom were 
inspired." 

The moral discipline of the family where 
Rufus Choate grew up was careful and exact. 
A portion of the Catechism was recited every 
Sabbath, and the lessons thus learned were 
so deeply engraved on his memory as never to 
be forgotten. On one occasion in later life, 
in commenting upon the testimony of a witness 
who professed his willingness to do any job 
that might offer on Sunday, just as he would 
on any other day, Mr. Choate repeated, word 



RUFUS CHOATE. 19 

for word; one of the long answers of the Cate- 
chism on the import of the Fourth Command- 
ment, and then turning to the Court, said, 
''May it please your honor, my mother taught 
me this in my earliest childhood, and I trust 
I shall not forget it in my age." 

After young Choate left college he spent a 
year in the office of William E. Wirt, in Wash- 
ington. Mr. Wirt was then Attorney-General 
of the United States, and the association with 
him furnished great opportunity for the young 
lawyer. Writing to an old college chum dur- 
ing this year, this significant sentence occurs 
in his letter, ''I read every day some chapters in 
the English Bible." This early religious teach- 
ing and Bible reading produced, as it always 
will, strength of conscience. An educated con- 
science was Rufus Choate's supreme master. 
The story is told that on one very stormy night, 
during his residence in Danvers, Mass., he was 
called upon at a late hour to draw the will of 
a dying man who lived several miles distant. 
He went, performed the service, and returned 
home. But after going to bed, as he lay re- 
volving in his mind each provision of the paper 
he had so rapidly prepared, there flashed across 



20 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

his memory an omission that might possibly 
cause the testator's intention to be misunder- 
stood. He sprang from his bed and began 
dressing himself rapidly^, to the great surprise 
of his wife, only answering her inquiries by 
saying that he had done what must be undone, 
and in the thick of the storm rode again to his 
dying client, explained the reason of his return, 
and drew a codicil to the will which made 
everything sure. 

He related this incident in after life, saying 
that sometimes, years after a case had been 
tried, he would feel a pang of reproach that 
he had not urged some argument which at that 
moment flashed across his mind. He always 
fought his lost cases over again, to see if he 
could find any argument whereby he might 
have gained them. 

Mr. Choate's biographer, Samuel Gilman 
Brown, a former president of Hamilton Col- 
lege, gives a very touching and graphic de- 
scription of the incidents connected with the 
death of a little girl but three years of age, 
which sets forth very tenderly the Christian 
faith and feeling of the great lawyer. Rev. 
Dr. Adams, who was pastor of the family. 



RUFUS CHOATE. 21 

was away from home, and so Mr. Choate 
wrote a letter which he sent by a special mes- 
senger to Rev. Hubbard Winslow, asking him 
to come immediately. 

"Entering the chamber," says Dr. Winslow, 
"at the appointed time^ I found the family 
all assembled. A beautiful little girl of per- 
haps three years lay dying. We all kneeled 
in prayer, and after a few remarks I was 
about to retire, to leave the weeping family 
to the sacredness of their domestic sorrow, 
when Mr. Choate took my hand and besought 
me to remain with them while the child lived. 
I consented to remain until evening, when I had 
another engagement. He stood by the fire- 
place, resting his elbows on the marble, with 
his face in his hands, evidently absorbed in 
prayer; Mrs. Choate was bending over the 
pillow with the yearning tenderness of a 
mother, and the older children and servants 
stood around in silent grief, while I sat by 
the bedside, observing the child's symptoms, 
and sometimes repeating a passage of Scrip- 
ture or a pertinent stanza of poetry. Thus 
a full hour passed in silence, in prayer, in tears, 
in communion with death and eternity, Mr. 



22 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Choate remaining motionless as a statue during 
the whole time. Perceiving the pulse failing 
and the breath becoming very short and diffi- 
cult, I said, 'Mr. Choate, I fear the dear child 
is just leaving us.' He then came to the bed- 
side, embraced her, kissed her three times, and 
then turned and resumed his position as be- 
fore. All the family followed him in a parting 
kiss. A few moments after, the angel spirit 
fled. I closed the sightless eyes and said, 'My 
dear Mr. Choate, your sweet child is in heaven !' 
He burst instantly into a flood of tears, and 
sobbed aloud. He did not change his position, 
but remained with his face buried in his hands 
and the tears pouring like rain drops upon the 
hearthstone. And thus he continued, until duty 
compelled me to leave the chamber of death. 
He then came and thanked me, and said with 
deep emotion, *I feel greatly comforted. My 
dear child has gone home. It was God's will 
to take her, and that is enough.' " 

Occasional references in Rufus Choate' s 
journals show that he was never so busy or 
so interested in other matters as to forget the 
necessity of feeding the spiritual life. During 
a trip to Europe, in 1850, he writes while on 



RUFUS CHOATE. 23 

shipboard, "I have come away without a book 
but the Bible and Prayer Book and Daily 
Food." Later he writes down this resolution, 
"I will commit one morsel in the 'Daily Food' 
daily, and have to-day, that of the 29th of 
June." In a memorandum concerning a relig- 
ious service which he had attended in London, 
he writes : "I have attended service in St. 
George's for want of knowing where to go. 
The music was admirable, forming a larger 
part than in the x\merican Episcopal Service, 
and performed divinely. The sermon was light 
and delivered in a cold 'sing-song' on 'The 
Character of David.' " 

In laying out a plan for his daily conduct, 
during a stay in England, he wrote down this 
resolution, "And now for some plan of time 
and movement for England. Before breakfast 
I shall walk at least an hour observantly, and 
on returning, jot down anything worth it. 
This hour is for exercise, however. I mean 
next to read every day a passage in the Bible, 
a passage in the Old and in the New Testament, 
beginning each, and commit my 'Daily Food.' " 
And a month later, when he had been very 
much taken up, so that he had little time to 



'24 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

write in his journal, he jots down this, "I read 
Bible, Prayer Book, and a page of Bishop 
Andrews' Prayers." 

All the men who have written about Rufus 
Choate have agreed in this : that as life matured 
with him, the beautiful graces of the Christian 
character became ever more marked in all his 
relations to others. One says of him: "It 
seemed as if nobody was ever so gentle, and 
sweet hearted^ and tender of others as he. And 
when we consider the constant provocation of 
his profession, his natural excitability, the 
ardor with which he threw himself into a 
case, the vigor and tenacity of purpose 
with which he fought his battle, as well 
as his extreme sensitiveness to sharp and 
unkind words, it seems little less than a 
miracle." 

Another says of him that he lavished his 
good nature upon all around him, in the court 
and in the office, upon students, witnesses, ser- 
vants, and strangers as well. He was so 
reluctant to inflict pain that he would long en- 
dure annoyance, such as permitting himself to 
be bored by an undesired visitor, or put himself 
to great inconvenience in escaping from a diffi- 



RUFUS CHOATE. 25 

cult situation rather than to wound the feelings 
of another. We are assured that he never 
spoke ill of the absent, nor would suffer others 
to do so in his presence. He was affectionate, 
obliging, desirous to make every one about him 
happy, with strong sympathy for any one in 
trouble. 

Dr. Adams, who was his pastor for many 
years, in his funeral address tells a character- 
istic little anecdote: ''He had not walked far, 
one morning, a few years ago, he said, and 
gave as a reason that his attention was taken 
by a company of those large, creeping things 
which lie on their backs in the paths as soon 
as the light strikes them. 'But of what use 
was it,' he was asked, 'for you to help them 
over with your cane, knowing that they 
would become supine again?' 'I gave 
them a fair start in life,' he said, 'and 
my responsibility was at an end.' Rufus 
Choate was always helping them on to their 
feet." 

The great lawyer was very fond of music, 
especially sacred music. Every Sunday even- 
ing, after tea, he would gather his children 
around the piano and join them in singing the 



26 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

old Psalm tunes and chants. In his last ill- 
ness his children sang these old songs of praise 
for him every night. His pure and happy 
spirit must have rejoiced on entering the 
heavenly chorus. 



SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 



'J'SS 



CHAPTER III. 

SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 

The first message ever sent over the tele- 
graphic wire — 'What hath God wrought!" — 
taken from the twenty-third verse of the 
twenty-third chapter of the book of Numbers, 
reveals a spirit in perfect harmony with the 
entire life and character of Samuel F. B. 
Morse, the famous inventor of our modern 
telegraph system. Professor Morse was not 
only a Christian in his creed, but a sincere and 
genuine Christian in his practice. Both his 
father and his grandfather were ministers of 
the gospel. He gave himself, without reserve, 
to the Christian life in his youth, and held to it 
with consecrated devotion throughout his 
career. It was in his father's church in 
Charlestown, Mass., that he first publicly pro- 
fessed his faith in Christ. Later on, when the 
family removed to New Haven, Conn., he be- 
came a member of the First Congregational 



30 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Church of that city, where he remained in con- 
nection until the year 1847, when he settled in 
Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and united with the First 
Presbyterian Church. But wherever he was, 
in London, or Paris, or Washington, on sea 
or land, in whatever company of people he was 
thrown, he was always known and recognized 
as a Christian. Those who knew him most 
intimately were constantly impressed with the 
feeling that he was guided in all his actions 
by reverent love toward God and sympathy and 
kindness toward his fellow-men. To him the 
Scriptures were the guide and rule of life, and 
he held his own life constantly to their stand- 
ard. He was often unjustly assailed by those 
who were envious or jealous of him because of 
his inventive genius; yet these things which 
often bring out the seamy side in a man's 
character, had no such result with him. 
Through the most annoying experiences he 
maintained a composure and calmness, with a 
forgiving and gentle spirit, which caused those 
who beheld him to feel like saying,, as was 
said of Peter and John, that he "had been with 
Jesus and learned of him." He greatly 
delighted in Christian conversation, and walk- 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 31 

ing on the street, or in the midst of business, 
when he was seemingly overwhelmed with 
business cares and perplexed with many busi- 
ness anxieties, he ever welcomed a conversa- 
tion on the subject of personal religion and 
would talk with all the simplicity of a child 
with any friend who was ready to discuss the 
subject of the relation of the soul to God. 

Professor Morse was far more than a senti- 
mentalist in the Christian life. The Christian 
spirit pervaded all his business. He was active 
and conscientious in the use of his money and 
gave largely and cheerfully as his means in- 
creased to any object of Christian benevolence 
which appealed to his judgment. Few men, 
we are told, have given more in proportion to 
advance the cause of Christ. He held all his 
success to be God-given. After the first dis- 
patch was sent and received, Morse said of it, 
"It baptized the American telegraph with the 
name of its Author." The Author, as he be- 
lieved, was God. So grateful was he that he 
gave the first earnings of the telegraph as a 
sort of first-fruits to the church. From this 
beginning, which was only the commencement 
of a flow of wealth into his hands which ever 



32 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

afterward gave him abundance, he remained 
faithful to that sense of stewardship to God. 
He was Hberal in his gifts to colleges and 
theological seminaries, as well as to missionary 
and other religious causes. 

During the later years of his life, when 
Professor Morse had become one of the famous 
men in the world and when honors and riches 
were heaped upon him, the marked character- 
istic of the man was the development of the 
spiritual life. None of his successes in any 
degree spoiled him. In the midst of earthly 
honors and riches his appreciation of spiritual 
riches increased. 

Dr. Wheeler, of Poughkeepsie, who was 
Mr. Morse's pastor during the latter part of 
his life, has given a very charming picture of 
Morse's religious life during the years when he 
knew him. He writes: "It was at Locust 
Grove I knew him best and most. Here among 
the grand old trees, the fresh, green lawn, and 
rare plants which adorned his grounds, the 
fashion and substance of the man were seen. 
This home he greatly loved. Writing from one 
of the capitals in Europe at one time imme- 
diately after one of the grandest receptions 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 33 

that scholar or philosopher ever received, he 
says: 'My heart yearns for my dear old home 
on the Hudson; its calm repose, its sweet 
walks, where so often I have been with God.' 
I recall with great satisfaction the many times 
on his veranda, looking westward on flood and 
hills beyond, in large discourse he would dwell 
upon the 'things unseen' and his utterances 
would have such depth and scope that I mar- 
veled at the beauty and strength of that love 
for God and his realm which rose and fell 
like mighty tides in his heart." 

On one occasion when his pastor was with 
him some allusion was made to his career and 
the honors which had thickened upon him. A 
significant smile stole over the face of the great 
inventor as he gently said : 'It is all of God. 
He has used me as his hand in all this. I am 
not indifferent to the rewards of earth and 
the praise of my fellow-men, but I am more 
pleased with the fact that my Father in heaven 
has allowed me to do something for him and 
his world." On another occasion when Dr. 
Wheeler called on him Morse met him with 
brimming eyes, and, grasping him with both 
hands, exclaimed: "Oh, you cannot tell how 



34 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

thankful I have been this morning, in thinking 
this matter of the telegraph all over, that God 
has permitted me to do something for the health 
and comfort of my fellows. I have just heard 
of a family made happy by a telegraphic dis- 
patch from one of its absent members, an- 
nouncing his safety, when the whole household 
v^as in grief over his supposed death; only 
think of the many homes that may be thus 
gladdened, relieved from solitude and pain!" 
Some scientific men have seemed to take a 
greater interest in trying to exclude God from 
his own universe than in finding out the truth ; 
but for such men Morse had no sympathy. He 
was a thoughtful, well-read, and thoroughly 
practical scientific seeker after truth; but he 
found God everywhere. Pointing one day to 
an insect's wing, he said: "There, that is 
enough of itself to satisfy any reasonable mind 
of God's being, wisdom and power. It is in 
these things which we call small that I am find- 
ing every day fresh proofs of God's direct and 
positive agency. I see in all these things God's 
finger, and I am so glad through them to get 
hold of God's hand ; and then," he added, with 
moistened eyes, and a voice husky with emo- 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 35 

tion, '^if God makes all these small things 
around us here so exquisitely beautiful, what 
grandeur must attach to the things beyond, 
unseen and eternal !" 

Soon after coming to Poughkeepsie, one 
summer, he fractured one of his limbs, and 
was confined for most of that season to his 
room. Naturally it was a great trial to him, 
but he bore it with such resignation and there 
ripened upon him during it all such spiritual 
graces that his friends regarded it a rare privi- 
lege to see him in his sick chamber. His win- 
dow overlooked the broad and splendid Hud- 
son River. As a friend sat with him one 
afternoon, looking upon river and hill and 
forest as they glowed in the changing light of 
the setting sun, Morse said : "I have been look- 
ing upon the river of my life. I thank God 
that it had such a beginning, that upon it has 
fallen such a sunshine; and I know whom I 
have believed and rejoice that so soon this 
river will flow out into the broad sea of an 
everlasting love." 

One who knew him well writes of Morse: 
*'In his whole character and in all his relations 
he was one of the most remarkable men of his 



36 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

age. He was one who drew all who came in 
contact with him to his heart, disarming all 
prejudices, silencing all cavil. In his family 
he was light, life, and love; with those in his 
employ he was ever considerate and kind, never 
exacting and harsh, but honorable and just, 
seeking the good of every dependent; in the 
community he was a pillar of strength and 
duty, commanding the homage of universal 
respect ; in the church he walked with God and 
men. He is not, for God hath taken him. 
Blessed for evermore his memory, and blessed 
those who saw and knew him not merely as 
the man of science and the Christian philoso- 
pher, but as the man of God." 

The spiritual life of Professor Morse deep- 
ened and became still more beautiful as the 
time of his departure from the world drew 
near; his faith strengthened and his hopes 
brightened with the years. Writing, in 1868, 
from Dresden, to his grandson, he says : "The 
nearer I approach to the end of my pilgrimage, 
the clearer is the evidence of the divine origin 
of the Bible; the grandeur and sublimity of 
God's remedy for fallen man are more appre- 
ciated, and the future is illumined with hope 



SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 37 

and joy." And in a letter to his brother, dated 
from Paris, March 4, 1868, he says: 'It can- 
not be long before all this will be gone. I feel 
daily the necessity of sitting looser to the world 
and taking stronger hold on heaven. The 
Saviour daily seems more precious; his love, 
his atonement, his divine power are themes 
which occupy my mind in the wakeful hours of 
the night and change the time of 'watching for 
the morning' from irksomeness to joyful com- 
munion with him." 

Morse lived to a ripe old age, having num- 
bered his fourscore years before the summons 
came. He met the call with unwavering faith 
and courage, and in response to a remark made 
by one of his tried friends concerning the good- 
ness of God to him in the past he said, with 
cheerful and buoyant hope, "The best is yet to 
come." 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 



CHAPTER IV. 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

After the death of John Quincy Adams a 
book was published, entitled ''Letters of John 
Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and its 
Teachings." These letters were written dur- 
ing the younger life of Mr. Adams, while he 
was minister for the United States at St. 
Petersburg, Russia. His young son was in 
school in Massachusetts, and this brillant law- 
yer and diplomatist thought there was no way 
in which he could help his boy so much as to 
rivet his mind on the importance of the Bible 
as the Word of God. He sought in these let- 
ters to inculcate a love and reverence for the 
Bible and a delight in its perusal and study. 
Throughout his long life Mr. Adams was him- 
self a daily and devout reader of both the Old 
and the New Testaments, and delighted in 
comparing and considering them in the various 
languages with which he was familiar, hoping 



42 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

thereby to acquire a nicer and clearer appre- 
ciation of their meaning. The Bible was em- 
phatically his counsel and monitor through life, 
and the fruits of its guidance are seen in the 
unsullied character which he bore through the 
turbid waters of political contention to his final 
earthly rest. His political life was lived at a 
time when factional and party feeling ran high 
and when political abuse abounded; but the 
historian has said of him that he left no man 
behind him who would wish to fix a stain on the 
name he inscribed so high on the roll of 
his country's most gifted and illustrious 
sons. 

These letters to his son are not only of great 
value because of their candid and reverent 
spirit, but especially because of the testimony 
so unconsciously borne by this statesman and 
scholar to the truth and excellency of the 
Christian faith and Scriptures. 

John Quincy Adams was a practical Chris- 
tian. This was proved by his spotless life, 
his strict honesty and integrity, his devotion 
to duty, his faithful obedience to the dictates 
of conscience at whatever sacrifice, his rever- 
ence of God and of Christ, his respect for 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 43 

religion and its institutions, and his recognition 
of its claims and responsibilities. 

For many years Mr. Adams was a member 
and one of the vice-presidents of the Ameri- 
can Bible Society. In reply to an invitation 
to attend its anniversary in 1830, he wrote the 
following letter: 

"Sir: Your letter of the twenty-second of 
March was duly received; and while regret- 
ting my inability to attend personally at the 
celebration of the anniversary of the institu- 
tion on the thirteenth of next month, I pray 
you, sir, to be assured of the gratification 
which I have experienced in learning of 
the success which has attended the benevo- 
lent exertions of the American Bible So- 
ciety. 

"In the decease of Judge Washington they 
have lost an able and valuable associate, whose 
direct co-operation, not less than his laborious 
and exemplary life, contributed to promote the 
cause of the Redeemer. Yet not for him, nor 
for themselves by the loss of him, are they 
called to sorrow as without hope ; for lives like 
his shine but as purer and brighter lights in the 



44 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

world after the lamp which fed them is 
extinct. 

"The distribution of Bibles, if the simplest, 
is not the least efficacious of the means of ex- 
tending the blessings of the Gospel to the 
remotest corners of the earth; for the Com- 
forter is in the sacred volume; and among the 
receivers of that million of copies distributed 
by the Society who shall number the multi- 
tudes awakened thereby, with good will to man 
in their hearts and with the song of the Lamb 
upon their lips ? 

'The hope of the Christian is inseparable 
from his faith. Whoever believes in the di- 
vine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures must 
hope that the religion of Jesus shall prevail 
throughout the earth. Never since the founda- 
tion of the world have the prospects of man- 
kind been more encouraging to that hope than 
they appear to be at the present time. And 
may the associated distribution of the Bible 
proceed and prosper, till the Lord shall have 
made 'bare his holy arm in the eyes of all 
nations; and all the ends of the earth shall 
see the salvation of our God.' 

"With many respects to the Board of Mana- 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 45 

gers, please to accept the good wishes of your 
friend and fellow-citizen, 

"John Quincy Adams." 

Throughout the life of Mr. Adams he lived 
in harmony with the spirit of this letter. In 
his old age, during a visit to Niagara Falls, 
he went one Sabbath morning to visit a rem- 
nant of the Tuscarora Indians and to attend 
divine worship with them. At the conclusion 
of the sermon the ex-President of the United 
States was invited to make an address to the 
Indians. A report made at the time has this 
paragraph : 

'*Mr. Adams alluded to his advanced age 
and said this was the first time he had ever 
looked upon their beautiful fields and forests; 
that he was truly happy to meet them there and 
join with them in the worship of our common 
Parent; reminded them that in years past he 
had addressed them from the position which 
he then occupied, in language at once that of 
his station and his heart, as *his children ;' and 
that now, as a private citizen, he hailed them, 
in terms of equal warmth and endearment, as 
his ^brethren and sisters.' He alluded, with 



46 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

a simple eloquence which seemed to move the 
Indians much, to the equal care and love v^ith 
which God regards all his children, whether 
savage or civilized. He touched briefly and 
forcibly on the topics of the sermon which 
they had heard and concluded with a beautiful 
and touching benediction upon them." 

In 1 83 1 John Quincy Adams wrote the hymn 
which was sung at the celebration of the Fourth 
of July at his home in Quincy, Mass. I quote 
these verses as peculiarly suggestive of his 
Christian faith^ though the entire hymn 
breathes the same spirit: 

Sing to the Lord a song of praise; 

Assemble, ye who love his name; 
Let congregated millions raise 

Triumphant glory's loud acclaim. 
From earth's remotest region come ; 

Come, greet your Maker and your King ; 
With harp, with timbrel, and with drum, 

His praise let hill and valley sing. 

Go forth in arms ; Jehovah reigns ; 

Their graves let foul oppressors find ; 
Bind all their sceptered kings in chains; 

Their peers with iron fetters bind. 
Then to the Lord shall praise ascend; 

Then all mankind, with one accord, 
And freedom's voice, till time shall end, 

In pealing anthems, praise the Lord. 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 47 

I turn from this patriotic but intensely re- 
ligious composition to one of the tenderest 
and sweetest little poems in all our American 
literature, which shows with what simplicity 
of faith and love the scholar and the poli- 
tician had been sitting at the feet of Jesus 
as he listened to his teaching concerning the 
immortality of little children. The following 
is a quotation from his poem on 'The Death 
of Children :" 



Sure, to the mansions of the blest 
When infant innocence ascends, 

Some angel brighter than the rest 
The spotless spirit's flight attends. 

On wings of ecstasy they rise, 
Beyond where worlds material roll, 

Till some fair sister of the skies 
Receives the unpolluted soul. 

There at the Almighty Father's hand, 
Nearest the throne of living light, 

The choirs of infant seraphs stand, 
And dazzling shine where all are bright; 

The inextinguishable beam, 
With dust united at our birth, 

Sheds a more dim, discolored gleam, 
The more it lingers upon earth: 



48 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Closed is the dark abode of clay, 
The stream of glory faintly burns, 

Nor unobscured the lucid ray 
To its own native fount returns. 

But when the Lord of mortal bfeath 

Decrees his bounty to resume, 
And points the silent shaft of death, 

Which speeds an infant to the tomb, 

No passion fierce, no low desire, 

Has quenched the radiance of the flame; 

Back to its God the living fire 
Returns, unsullied, as it came. 

I am sure we will all agree with his biogra- 
pher, William H. Seward, that the heart which 
could turn aside from the conflicts of the politi- 
cal world, and utter sentiments so chaste and 
tender, revealing a spiritual mindedness rarely 
beautiful, must have been the residence of the 
sweetest and noblest emotions of man. 

The end of life came to John Quincy Adams, 
as he desired, in the midst of his work. Rising 
as if to address the Speaker from his seat 
in the House of Representatives, in Washing- 
ton, he was suddenly stricken with paralysis, 
and two days later he bade farewell to earth. 
His last words were, "This is the last of earth ! 
I am content!" 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 49 

Among the many tributes paid to John 
Quincy Adams none were more tender and 
appreciative than those that were offered by his 
political foes. Mr. Holmes, of South Caro- 
lina, closed his eloquent eulogy with these 
words: *'But the last Sabbath, and in this hall 
he worshiped with others. Now his spirit 
mingles with the noble army of martyrs, and 
the just made perfect, in the eternal adora- 
tion of the living God." 

His colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. 
Davis, said in his address in the House of 
Representatives : *'It is believed to have been 
the earnest wish of his heart to die like Chat- 
ham, in the midst of his labors. It was a sub- 
lime thought that where he had toiled in the 
House of the Nation, in hours of the day 
devoted to its service, the stroke of death 
should reach him and there sever the ties of 
love and patriotism which bound him to earth. 
He fell in his seat, attacked by paralysis, of 
which he had before been a subject. To de- 
scribe the scene which ensued would be im- 
possible. It was more than a spontaneous gush 
of feeling which all such events call forth, so 
much to the honor of our nature. It was 



50 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the expression of reverence for his moral 
worth, of admiration for his great intellectual 
endowments, and veneration for his age and 
public services. All gathered around the suf- 
ferer, and the strong sympathy and deep feel- 
ing which were manifested showed that the 
business of the House (which instantly ad- 
journed) was forgotten amid the distressing 
anxieties of the moment. He was soon re- 
moved to the apartment of the Speaker, where 
he remained surrounded by afflicted friends 
till the weary clay resigned its immortal spirit. 
'This is the end of earth !' Brief but emphatic 
words. They were the last uttered by the 
dying Christian." 



JAMES A. GARFIELD 



^* 



CHAPTER V. 

JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

On a dark, rainy night in 1847, ^^ the Even- 
ing Star was leaving a long reach of black 
water in the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal, 
a boy was called out of his berth to take his 
turn in tending the bowline. Bundling him- 
self out of bed, his eyes only half opened, he 
took his place on the narrow platform, below 
the bow deck, and began uncoiling a rope to 
steady the boat so that it might pass through 
a lock it was approaching. Sleepily and 
slowly he unwound the coil till it knotted and 
caught in a narrow cleft in the edge of the 
deck. He gave it a sudden pull, but it held 
fast, then another and a stronger pull, and 
it gave way, but sent him over the bow of 
the boat into the water. Down he went into 
the dark night and still darker water, and the 
Evening Star glided on to bury him in a watery 
grave. No human help was near. God only 



54 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

could save him and he only by a miracle. So 
the boy thought as he went down, saying the 
prayer his mother had taught him. In- 
stinctively clutching the rope he sank below 
the surface; but then it tightened in his grasp 
and held firmly. Seizing it, hand over hand he 
drew himself up on deck, a live boy among 
the living. Another kink had caught in 
another crevice and proved his salvation. Was 
it the rope or the prayer of his loving mother 
that saved him.? The boy did not know; but 
long after the boat had passed the lock he 
stood there in his dripping clothes pondering 
the question. 

Coiling the rope, he tried to throw it again 
into the crevice, but it had lost the knack of 
kinking. Many times he tried — six hundred 
it is said — and then sat down and reflected: 
"I have thrown this rope six hundred times; 
I might throw it ten times as many without 
its catching. Ten times six hundred are six 
thousand, so there were six thousand chances 
against my life. Against such odds Provi- 
dence alone could have saved it. Providence, 
therefore, thinks it worth saving, and if that 
is so, I won't throw it away on a canal boat. 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 55 

I'll go home, get an education, and become a 
man." 

Straightway he acted on the resolution, and 
not long after stood before his mother's log 
cottage in what was then the Cuyahoga wilder- 
ness. It was late at night, but by the fire- 
light that came through the window he saw 
his mother kneeling before an open Bible which 
lay on a chair in the corner. She was read- 
ing, but her eyes were off the page, and she 
was looking up as if quoting the Scripture 
back again to God, and these were the words 
he heard: "O turn unto me^ and have mercy 
upon me; give thy strength unto thy ser- 
vant, and save the son of thine handmaid !" 

He opened the door, put his arm about her 
neck, and his head upon her bosom. What 
words he said we do not know; but there by 
her side he gave back to God the life which 
he had given. So the mother's prayer was 
answered. So sprang up the seed which in 
toil and tears she had planted. 

That boy was James A. Garfield, later the 
distinguished soldier, congressman, senator, 
and President of the United States. 

Soon after the experience we have related 



56 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

young Garfield proceeded to carry out his reso- 
lution to get an education. And in March, 
1850, during a series of evangelistic meetings, 
he united with the Church of the Disciples 
and was baptized in a little stream that flows 
into the Chagrin River. This final decision 
and public confession of his faith in Christ was 
brought about by a quiet, sweet-tempered man 
who held a series of meetings in the school- 
house near the Garfield homestead and told in 
the plainest manner and with the most straight- 
forward earnestness the story of the Gospel. 
The openness of young Garfield's mind, very 
remarkable for a young man yet under twenty, 
may be seen in the reasons which he gave for 
choosing to go to Williams College instead of 
Bethany College, an institution sustained by 
the church of which he was a member and pre- 
sided over by Alexander Campbell, the man 
above all others he had been taught to admire 
and revere. These are the reasons, as he gave 
them in a letter to a friend : "There are three 
reasons why I have decided not to go to 
Bethany : First, the course of study is not so 
extensive or thorough as in Eastern colleges. 
Second, Bethany leans too heavily toward 



JAMES A, GARFIELD. 57 

slavery. Third, I am the son of Disciple par- 
ents, am one myself, and have had but little ac- 
quaintance with people of other views, and, 
having always lived in the West, I think it will 
make me more liberal, both in my religious and 
general views and sentiments, to go into a 
new circle, where I shall be under new 
influences. These considerations led me to 
conclude to go to some New England 
college." 

Garfield took a fine standing in William.s 
College, and his religious character was as 
well understood as his intellectual power and 
ability. He became a contributor to and after- 
wards editor of the Williams Quarterly, the 
college magazine. A quotation from one of 
these articles, entitled, 'The Province of His- 
tory," reveals his strong and intelligent Chris- 
tian faith at this time: *'For every village, 
state, and nation there is an aggregate of 
native talent which God has given and by 
which, together with his Providence, he leads 
that nation on, and thus leads the world. In 
the light of these truths we affirm that no man 
can understand the history of any nation or 
of the world who does not recognize in it the 



58 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

power of God and behold his stately goings 
forth as he walks among the nations. It is 
his hand that is moving the vast superstructure 
of human history, and though but one of the 
windows were unfurnished, like that of the 
Arabian palace, yet all the powers of earth 
could never complete it without the aid of the 
Divine Architect. 

*'To employ another figure — the world's his- 
tory is a divine poem of which the history of 
every nation is a canto and of every man a 
word. Its strains have been pealing along 
down the centuries, and though there have 
been mingled the discord of roaring cannon 
and dying men, yet to the Christian, philos- 
opher, and historian — the humbler listener — 
there has been a divine melody running through 
the song, which speaks of hope and halcyon 
days to come. The record of every orphan's 
sigh, of every widow's prayer, of every noble 
deed, of every honest heart-throb for the right 
is swelling that gentle strain; and when at 
last the great end is attained — when the lost 
image of God is restored to the human soul, 
when the church anthems can be pealed forth 
without a discordant note — then will angels 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 59 

join in the chorus and all the sons of God 
again 'Shout for joy.' *' 

On leaving college Garfield was at first a 
professor in and a little later president of the 
college at Hiram, Ohio. The Church of the 
Disciples is accustomed to accord large liberty 
of speaking to its laymen, and so it came to 
be a recognized part of the young college pres- 
ident's life to preach a brief sermon to his 
pupils every Sunday. In later days many of 
the students of that time looked back to those 
Sunday morning talks as the vital religious 
influence which molded their young lives and 
established them in the Christian faith. 

It is not the object of this article in any 
way to follow the life of Garfield as a biogra- 
pher would do. But into the legislature, and 
on into the civil war, where he was swept 
soon after, through his growing career as a 
soldier, Garfield never forgot his religion. His 
first recourse in every emergency of life was 
to the Bible and to God. One of his biogra- 
phers says of him that when Governor Denni- 
son of Ohio offered Garfield the lieutenant- 
colonelcy of the Forty-second Ohio Regiment, 
he did not accept the tendered command 



6o RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

hastily. He by no means grasped the glitter of 
command with the avidity of an aspirant for 
honors. He went home, opened his mother's 
Bible, and pondered upon the subject. He 
had a wife, a child, and a few thousand dol- 
lars. If he gave his life to the country, would 
God and the few thousand dollars provide for 
his wife and child? He consulted the Bible 
about it. It seemed to answer in the affirma- 
tive, and toward the next morning he wrote to 
a friend : "I regard my life as given to the 
country. I am only anxious to make as much 
of it as possible before the mortgage on it is 
foreclosed." 

Many stories are told of the way Garfield 
carried his Christian faith into the army camp, 
in association with his fellow officers and in 
the command of his troops. Again and again, 
after a battle, it was his custom to go among 
the dying and the wounded and talk with men 
in sore trouble about the Christ who was able 
to comfort and save them. 

One of the notable occasions on which Gar- 
field's Christian faith shone forth with extra- 
ordinary sublimity was in New York City the 
morning after Lincoln's assassination. There 



JAMES A. GARFIELD. 6i 

was a great mass-meeting gathered in the 
street in front of the Exchange Building. 
Nearly a hundred generals, judges, statesmen, 
lawyers, editors, clergymen, and others were 
gathered in a reception room looking out on a 
massive balcony, where the speakers were to 
stand. The meeting took a bad turn. The 
mob was stirred to riot; there was a spirit of 
vengeance in the air. One man lay dead, 
another was dying, and the mob began to cry 
for the destruction of the World office. If 
it had once got started, murder and ruin would 
have spread everywhere. Then it was that a 
man went to the front. He held a telegram in 
his hand, and waved it above the heads of 
the excited throng. He caught their eyes and 
ears by shouting, "Another telegram from 
Washington." And then, in the awful still- 
ness of the crisis, taking advantage of the 
hesitation of the crowd, whose steps had been 
arrested a moment, a right arm was lifted sky- 
ward, and a voice, clear and steady, loud and 
distinct, spoke out: "Fellow citizens! Clouds 
and darkness are round about him. His pa- 
vilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the 
skies. Justice and judgment are the establish- 



62 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ment of his throne ! Mercy and truth shall go 
before his face ! Fellow citizens ! God reigns, 
and the Government at Washington still 
lives!" 

The effect was tremendous. The crowd 
stood riveted to the ground with awe, gazing 
at the motionless orator, and thinking of God 
and the security of the Government in that 
hour. As the boiling wave subsides and set- 
tles to the sea when some strong wind beats 
it down, so the tumult of the people sank and 
became still. All took it as a divine omen. 
As their passions cooled men turned to one 
another inquiring the name of the man who 
had wrought such wonders by his sublime 
words quoted from God's truth, and those who 
knew answered, 'Tt is General James A. Gar- 
field, of Ohio." 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 




WILLIAM M KINLEY. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WILLIAM MCKINLEY. 

The mother of William McKinley was a 
woman of rarely beautiful character. It was 
her prayer and her desire that her son William 
should be a preacher of the Gospel ; and though" 
the great weight of his life was to be given in 
other directions, he was for many years a local 
preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
and throughout his entire life he gave con- 
tinuous and powerful testimony to the fact of 
his personal faith in God, in the divine inspira- 
tion of the Bible, and in Jesus Christ as his 
personal Saviour. 

When young McKinley was fifteen years of 
age he moved with his parents to Poland, 
Ohio. There was a little academy at this town, 
and here the future statesman and President 
received such academic instruction as was to 
serve for his life work. It was here that he 
made his first public profession of faith in 
Christ. 



66 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

In 1856 Rev. A. D. Morton, a Methodist 
itinerant preacher, was appointed to the church 
in Poland, Ohio. It was a lovely little country 
town. It had that pleasant, intelligent, thor- 
oughly moral and religious atmosphere which 
often pervades the country college town. Small 
as the town was, there were three churches, a 
college, and a law-school. The pastor in such 
a town finds not only his most delightful but 
his most important work in seeking to know 
and help the students of the college. Among 
the first young men Pastor Morton became 
acquainted with was William McKinley. He 
was a genial, kind-spirited young man and 
showed that quality of unselfish gentleness in 
dealing with every one who came in contact 
with him which was as fascinating in his boy- 
hood as it was in later days at the White 
House. 

During the winter Mr. Morton decided on 
holding a series of revival meetings and ear- 
nestly prosecuted the work, preaching night 
after night, and especially interesting himself 
in winning the young students who were at 
such a critical period of their lives to make 
a definite decision for Christ. William Mc- 



WILLIAM McKINLEY. (y^ 

Kinley attended the meetings, but had made 
no move whatever toward personal acceptance 
of the invitations offered until, one evening, 
without any excitement or previous intima- 
tion, he quietly arose and announced his inten- 
tion of beginning then and there a Christian 
life. 

Mr. Morton, who still lives, remembers very 
distinctly some of the sentences he uttered. 
Among them were these : "God is the being 
above all to be loved and served;" ''Religion 
seems to me to be the best thing in all the 
world;" ''Here I take my stand for life." What 
splendid sentences they are ! Many young men 
who are "almost persuaded," but have not 
yet made the great decision, might well ponder 
these words of this man, the merit of whose 
manhood came in later years to be recognized 
by a world-wide appreciation. 

Throughout his entire public life William 
McKinley remained faithful to that confes- 
sion and vow which he registered among his 
classmates in the little academy church. There 
was never any question concerning his relig- 
ious principles, for he gave the most devout 
heed to the Word of God, attending the ser- 



68 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

vices of the church with the greatest regu- 
larity, entering into the singing of the hymns 
and the other services of divine worship with 
manifest earnestness and sincerity. 

During the time President McKinley was 
in the White House I was making a long trip 
by train when I fell into conversation with a 
fellow passenger, himself a man widely known 
throughout the country and who was of a dif- 
erent political faith from that of the then Pres- 
ident of the United States. He related to me 
a conversation which he in turn had had with 
another man who had been very bitterly 
opposed to the President in politics and had 
entertained for him, politically, very harsh 
feelings because of differences with him in 
matters of public importance. But this man 
had never seen the President until, shortly 
before going to the East on business, he had 
stopped over for a first visit to the city of 
Washington. 

On Sunday morning, drawn by curiosity, 
and retaining his severely critical feeling con- 
cerning the President, he visited the church 
where Mr. McKinley was accustomed to wor- 
ship. It was Communion Sunday morning, 



WILLIAM Mckinley. 69 

and, said this man to his friend, "1 watched 
the President. I watched his face while he 
sang; I gave close attention to his countenance 
and attitude during all the opening service, 
and his interest in the earnest words which 
were spoken before the sacrament of the Lord's 
Supper was administered. And after a while, 
when I saw William McKinley get up from 
his place and go and kneel down at the altar, 
humbly, with the rest, and reverently take the 
Communion, and then, when he arose, quietly 
wipe away the traces of emotion from his 
eyes, his whole countenance and attitude show- 
ing the deepest religious emotion, I confess 
to you that I felt a great change coming over 
myself, and I said to myself, 'A country which 
has a man like that at the head of its affairs 
is not so badly off, after all.' " 

McKinley's pastor in his home town of Can- 
ton, Ohio, where he attended church whenever 
at home, and where his membership remained 
until his death, had this to say of his Christian 
character: "Another beauty in the character 
of our President, which was a chaplet of grace 
about his neck, was that he was a Christian. 
In the broadest, noblest sense of the word 



70 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

that was true. His confidence in God was 
strong and unwavering; it held him steady in 
many a storm, where others were driven before 
the wind and tossed. He beheved in the 
Fatherhood of God and in his sovereignty. 
His faith in the Gospel of Christ was deep 
and abiding. It is well known that his godly 
mother had hoped for him that he would 
become a minister of the Gospel and that she 
believed it to be the highest vocation in life. 
It was not, however, his mother's faith that 
made him a Christian. He had gained in early 
life a personal knowledge of Jesus which 
guided him in the performance of greater 
duties and vaster responsibilities than have been 
the lot of any other American President. He 
said at one time, while bearing heavy burdens, 
that he could not discharge the daily duties of 
his life but for the fact that he had faith in 
God." 

The death of William McKinley, after being 
struck down by the hand of the assassin, will 
ever remain as a sublime testimony to the divin- 
ity of Christianity. Mr. James Creelman, in 
his book, "On the Great Highway," gives an 
authorized version of the stricken President's 



WILLIAM Mckinley. 71 

last words. It is one of the most marvelous 
illustrations in history of the power of Jesus 
Christ to give perfect rest to the soul in its 
greatest emergency. In the afternoon of his 
last day on earth, McKinley began to realize 
that his life was slipping away, and that the 
efforts of science could not save him. He asked 
the family physician to bring the surgeons. 
One by one they entered, and approached the 
bedside. When they were gathered about him, 
the President opened his eyes and said : "It is 
useless, gentlemen; I think we ought to have 
prayer." Then the dying man crossed his 
hands on his breast, and half-closed his eyes. 
There was a beautiful smile on his countenance. 
The surgeons bowed their heads. Tears 
streamed from the eyes of the white-clad nurses 
on either side of the bed. ''Our Father, which 
art in heaven," said the President, in a clear, 
steady voice. The lips of the surgeons moved, 
"Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. 
Thy will be done — " the sobbing of a nurse dis- 
turbed the still air. The President opened his 
eyes and closed them again. "Thy will be 
done on earth, as it is in heaven." A long sigh. 
The sands of life were running swiftly. He 



72 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

began again : ''Give us this day our daily 
bread; and forgive us our debts as we forgive 
our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, 
but deliver us from evil." Another silence. 
The surgeons looked at the dying face and the 
trembling lips. 'Tor thine is the kingdom, 
and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen." 
"Amen," whispered the surgeons. 

A little later the President was conscious 
again. He asked for his wife. Presently she 
came to him, leaning feebly on the arm of his 
secretary. As she reached the side of her hus- 
band and lover — who had read to her every day 
at twilight for years from the Bible — she sank 
into a chair, and, leaning her frail form over 
the white counterpane, took his hands in hers 
and kissed them. 

The President's eyes were closed. His 
breath came slowly. As he felt the touch of his 
wife's lips, he smiled. It was to be their last 
meeting on earth. "Good-by! Good-by, all." 
The wife gazed into the w^hite face and strug- 
gled for the strength to bear it. "It is God's 
way. His will, not ours, be done." The 
President turned his face slightly toward his 
wife. A look of ineffable love shone in the 



WILLIAM McKINLEY. 73 

haggard features. Once more he spoke: 
"Nearer, my God to thee" — his soul was on 
his Ups. His face was radiant. ''E'en though 
it be a cross" — There was a moment of utter 
silence. "That has been my inextinguishable 
prayer." His voice was almost inaudible. 'Tt 
is God's way." It was the last thought and 
the last word of the gentle and noble McKinley 
on earth. He awoke in heaven. He had rest. 



EMMA WILLARD 




EMMA WILLARD. 



CHAPTER VIL 

EMMA WILLARD. 

Emma Willard was one of the few women 
whose names received votes for a place in the 
Hall of Fame. Her biographer, Dr. John 
Lord, in summarizing her claims to immortal- 
ity in the hearts of her fellow citizens, declares 
that her peculiar glory is in giving impulse to 
the cause of female education. In this cause 
she rendered priceless services. When we 
remember the institutions she founded and con- 
ducted, the six thousand young ladies whom 
she educated, and many of them gratuitously; 
when we bear in mind the numerous books she 
wrote to be used in schools, and the great favor 
with which these books have generally been 
received; when we think of the ceaseless en- 
ergy, in various ways, which she put forth, 
for more than half a century, to elevate her sex, 
it would be difficult to find a woman who in her 
age or country was more useful or who will 



78 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

be longer remembered as both good and great. 
Not for original genius, not for any immortal 
work of art, not for a character free from 
blemishes and faults does she claim an exalted 
place among women, but as a benefactor of her 
country and of her sex, in those things which 
shed luster around homes and give dignity to 
the human soul. 

Emma Willard was deeply religious, and 
never lost sight of the highest and noblest 
things in her educational work. Here is a 
beautiful hymn which she composed, and which 
was sung by her pupils at the close of a most 
thorough examination : 

O Thou, the First, the Last, the Best ! 

To Thee the grateful song we raise, 
Convinced that all our works should be 

Begun and ended with Thy praise. 

It is from Thee the thought arose 
When chants the nun or vestal train, 

That praise is sweeter to Thine ear 
When virgin voices hymn the strain. 

Lord, bless to us this parting scene; 

Sister to sister bids farewell; 
They wait to bear us to our homes, 

With tender parents there to dwell. 



EMMA WILLARD. 79 

Oh, may we ever live to Thee ! 

Then, as we leave earth's care-worn road, 
Angels shall wait to take our souls 

And bear them to our Father, God. 

An interesting occasion in the life of Emma 
Willard occurred in connection with the visit 
of General Lafayette to this country in 1825. 
His services in the cause of American inde- 
pendence, his friendship with Washington, his 
labors in behalf of constitutional liberty in 
France, his sufferings in an Austrian prison, 
and the mingled gallantry and sentiment, allied 
with rank, which early gave him prominence 
and fame, made him an idol to the American 
people. It is doubtful if popular enthusiasm 
has ever been so great over any visitor to this 
country. 

Emma Willard was enthusiastic to the high- 
est degree, and the coming of General Lafay- 
ette to Troy, N. Y., as a visitor to her school, 
made an epoch in her life. She wrote for the 
occasion two verses, which were sung in his 
honor by the young ladies of the school. In 
the second verse she does not fail to bear testi- 
mony to her faith in the atoning sacrifice of her 
Saviour. Both verses are of peculiar interest : 



8o RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

And art thou, then, dear hero, come? 

And do our eyes behold the man 
Who nerved his arm and bared his breast 

For us, ere yet our life began? 
For us and for our native land 

Thy youthful valor dared the war; 
And now, in winter of thine age, 

Thou'st come, and left thy loved ones far. 
Then deep and dear thy welcome be. 
Nor think thy daughters far from thee. 
Columbia's daughters, lo ! we bend, 
And claim to call thee father, friend. 

But was't our country's rights alone 

Impelled Fayette to Freedom's van? 
No, 'twas the love of human kind — 

It was the sacred cause of man ; 
It was benevolence sublime. 

Like that which sways the Eternal Mind! 
And, Benefactor of the world. 

He shed his blood for all mankind. 
Then deep and dear thy welcome be, 
Nor think thy daughters far from thee. 
Daughters of human kind, we bend, 
And claim to call thee father, friend. 

General Lafayette was affected to tears by 
this reception and at the close of the singing 
said: *'I cannot express what I feel on this 
occasion ; but will you, Madam, present me with 
three copies of those lines, to be given by me, 
as from you, to my three daughters?" 



EMMA WILLARD. 8i 

The sympathies of Emma Willard, Hke those 
of Lafayette whom she so warmly admired, 
went out to oppressed and needy people every- 
where. She became deeply interested in the 
cause of Greece, and in an address delivered in 
1833 she said: ''Where is there a child so 
noble in its lineage as Greece? Where does 
the sun shine upon a people so bright in native 
intellect ? With the advantages of instruction, 
with the renovating light of pure Christianity, 
Greece may again lead the nations of Europe 
not merely to eminence in arts and arms, but, by 
.moral regeneration, to the glorious liberty of 
the sons of God. If it be infatuation to be 
zealous in such a cause, I desire to be in- 
fatuated. If it be infatuation to be moved 
with compassion for degraded and imploring 
humanity, who of us, my brothers and sis- 
ters, would not wish to follow through such 
infatuation the steps of our blessed Mas- 
ter?" 

Emma Willard was a woman of the loftiest 
patriotism, and that patriotism was always 
Christian. Her "National Hymn" deserves, 
in my judgment, at least equal appreciation 
with good Dr. Smith's ''America." It ought 



82 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

to be in all the hymn books. The sentiment is 
lofty and the hymn is sublimely reverent. The 
verses are as follows : 



Giod save America ! 

God grant our standard may, 

Where'er it wave, 
Follow the just and right, 
Foremost be in the fight, 
And glorious still in might 

Our own to save. 

Chorus — Father Almighty, 

Humbly we crave, 

Save Thou America, 

Our country save ! 

God keep America — 

Of nations great and free, 

Man's noblest friend : 
Still with the ocean bound 
Our continent around, 
Each State in place be found, 

Till time shall end. 

God bless America — 
As in our fathers' day, 

So evermore! 
God grant all discord cease, 
Kind brotherhoods increase. 
And truth and love breathe peace 

From shore to shore ! 



EMMA WILLARD. 83 

In Emma Willard's case the promise of the 
Psalmist that the righteous shall bear fruit in 
old age was splendidly realized. To the close 
of her long and useful life she maintained her 
youthful vivacity, her enthusiasm of spirit, and 
her power to work. Her diary the last year of 
her life still notes the sermon she heard on 
Sunday. It is interesting to note that she 
recorded in her diary every sermon she heard 
during the last thirty years of her life. She 
attended lectures and the examinations at the 
Seminary up to within a short time before her 
death, with as much interest as she had taken 
twenty years before. She never lost her taste 
for reading or her interest in public affairs. 
She still took long drives and received visits 
from friends and read new books which were 
famous. Every Sunday evening she collected 
around her hospitable board her children and 
grandchildren and great grandchildren, as well 
as others among her intimate friends, and 
heard them repeat passages of Scripture. This 
was a habit of many years, and beautiful were 
those family reunions; but the most beautiful 
thing about them was the venerable figure of 
the benignant old lady entering into every sub- 



84 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ject of interest with the sympathy of youth and 
receiving from all the profoundest reverence 
and respect. 

Thus orderly, harmoniously, honorably, hap- 
pily, did this noble woman, when eighty years 
had rolled over her life, pass her declining days. 
She died April 15, 1870, at the age of eighty- 
three, after a life of usefulness and happiness, 
honored and beloved by all classes and by a 
numerous circle of friends. A distinguished 
educator said of her at the time of her death : 
"In the fulness of age she approached the ter- 
mination of life with the calmness of Christian 
philosophy and the faith of a true believer. 
When the last hour came, the final struggle was 
marked by fortitude and resignation, and the 
twilight of one life was but the morning rays 
of another. The place of her death was the 
old Seminary Building, at Troy. Here, half 
a century ago, she founded an institution which 
has been an honor to our age and country. 
Here she taught the true philosophy of living 
and dying — works done in faith and faith made 
practical in works. Here she inspired thou- 
sands of her own sex, for the common benefit 
of us all, with an ardent love of knowledge, 



EMMA WILLARD. 85 

with a profound reverence for the great truths 
of religion, and with the aspiration of duty to 
be done ; and here she impressed upon them the 
nobihty of her own nature." 

I do not know how better to bring to a close 
this remembrance of the Christian character 
and life of Emma Willard than to recall her 
''Ocean Hymn," which will perhaps be longest 
remembered of anything she wrote : 

Rocked in the cradle of the deep, 
I lay me down in peace to sleep ; 
Secure I rest upon the wave, 
For thou, O Lord ! hast power to save. 
I know thou wilt not slight my call. 
For thou dost mark the sparrow's fall ; 
And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, 
Rocked in the cradle of the deep. 

When in the dead of night I lie 
And gaze upon the trackless sky, 
The star-bespangled heavenly scroll, 
The boundless waters as they roll, — 
I feel thy wondrous power to save 
From perils of the stormy wave : 
Rocked in the cradle of the deep, 
I calmly rest and soundly sleep. 

And such the trust that still were mine. 
Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine, 
Or though the tempest's fiery breath 
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death! 



86 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

In ocean-cave, still safe with thee, 
The germ of immortality ! 
And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, 
Rocked in the cradle of the deep. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 



'fsa 




DANIEL WEBSTER. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

Daniel Webster's first text-book was the 
Bible, and he read it as far back as he could 
remember. Rufus Choate, in his great eulogy 
delivered before the Boston Bar, referred to 
the ''training of the giant infancy on Catechism 
and Bible, and Watts' version of the Psalms." 

William T. Davis, who knew Mr. Webster 
well, and who has recently written of him, de- 
clares that he was a man of the deepest religious 
feeling and was as familiar with the Bible as 
with the Constitution of the United States. It 
was his regular habit on Sunday morning to 
gather his household in his library, and after 
reading from the Scriptures to address them on 
the responsible duties of life. 

In his boyhood Daniel Webster joined the 
orthodox Congregational Church in Salisbury, 



90 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

N. H., under the pastorate of Rev. Thomas 
Worcester. When he removed to Portsmouth, 
N. H., he carried a letter to the orthodox Con- 
gregational Church in that town, under the pas- 
torate of Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster. On 
removing to Boston, Mr. Webster seems to 
have attended for a time on the ministry of Rev. 
Joseph Stevens Buckminster, a son of his 
former pastor in Portsmouth, who was now 
pastor of the Unitarian Brattle Street Church 
of Boston. He attended this church, however, 
but three years, when he became one of the 
founders of the St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal 
Church. He attended the meetings of its or- 
ganizers and was one of the building com- 
mittee in the construction of St. Paul's Church 
on Tremont Street. He occupied pew No. 25. 
Mr. Webster seems to have kept in touch with 
this church for the rest of his life. His son 
Charles, who died in 1824, his first wife, who 
died in 1828, and his son Edward, who died in 
Mexico in 1848, were buried in the vaults of 
St. Paul's Church, though afterward removed 
to Marshfield. 

Bishop Henry B. Whipple, in his "Lights 
and Shadows of a Long Episcopate," says that 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 91 

his aunt, Mrs. George Whipple, a niece of Dan- 
iel Webster, told him that when her uncle was 
staying at John Taylor's, in New Hampshire, 
he attended the little village church morning 
and evening. Another United States Senator 
came to visit him while he was there and said 
to him, "Mr. Webster, I am surprised that you 
go twice on Sunday to hear a plain country 
preacher when you pay little attention to far 
abler sermons in Washington." 

'Tn Washington," Mr. Webster replied, 
"they preach to Daniel Webster, the statesman ; 
but this man has been telling Daniel Webster, 
the sinner, of Jesus of Nazareth, and it has 
been helping him." 

There has been a great deal printed in recent 
years to give the impression that Daniel Web- 
ster was much given to dissipation, even to the 
extent of drunkenness. We are told of saloon- 
keepers who have Daniel Webster's bust in 
their windows, and the liquor traffic and peo- 
ple who are of a convivial turn have taken great 
interest in increasing and deepening that im- 
pression. That the belief is utterly unfounded 
no honest man who will faithfully search out 
the evidence can doubt. Rev. Edward Everett 



92 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Hale, D.D., is surely a good witness. His 
testimony would be held anywhere in America 
as of the highest import on a question of fact 
with which he was well acquainted. Here 
is what Dr. Hale has to say on the sub- 
ject : 

"Between the years 1826 and 1852, when he 
died, I must have seen him thousands of times. 
I must have read thousands of letters from him. 
I have been I know not how often at his house. 
My father, as I say, was his intimate friend. 
Now it was to me a matter of the utmost per- 
sonal surprise when I found gradually growing 
up in this country the impression that Mr. 
Webster was often, not to say generally, over- 
come with liquor in the latter years of his life. 
I should say that now a third part of the anec- 
dotes of him which you find afloat have refer- 
ence to occasions when it was supposed that, 
under the influence of whiskey, he did not know 
what he was doing. I would like to say, there- 
fore, that in the course of twenty-six years, 
running from the time when I was four years 
old to the time when I was thirty, I never had 
a dream or thought that he cared anything 
about wine or liquor — certainly I never sup- 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 93 

posed that he used it to excess. What is more, 
I know that my own father, who Hved to the 
year 1864, heard such stories as these with per- 
fect disgust and indignation. This is a good 
place to print my opinion that this class of 
stories has been nourished, partly carelessly 
and partly from worse motives, and they are 
not to be taken as real indications of the habit 
or life of the man." 

No one who will read the final will and testa- 
ment of Mr. Webster and note the spirit in 
which he faced death and eternity can doubt 
the depth and sincerity of his religious 
convictions. It was evidently his earnest 
wish to leave behind him no doubt of his 
faith in the truth of Christianity. He 
opened his will with these solemn para- 
graphs : 

"In the name of Almighty God! I, Daniel 
Webster of Marshfield, in the County of Ply- 
mouth, in the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts, Esquire, being now confined to my house 
with a serious illness, which, considering my 
time of life, is undoubtedly critical ; but being 
nevertheless in the full possession of my mental 



94 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

faculties, do make and publish this, my last will 
and testament : 

"I commit my soul into the hands of my 
heavenly Father, trusting in his infinite good- 
ness and mercy. 

"1 direct that my mortal remains be buried 
in the family vault at Marshfield, where monu- 
ments are already erected to my deceased chil- 
dren and their mother. Two places are marked 
for other monuments of exactly the same size 
and form. One of these, in proper time, is for 
me ; and perhaps I may leave an epitaph. The 
other is for Mrs. Webster. Her ancestors and 
all her kindred lie in a far distant city. My 
hope is that after many years she may come to 
my side and join me and others whom God 
hath given me. 

"I wish to be buried without the least show 
or ostentation, but in a manner respectful to 
my neighbors, whose kindness has contributed 
so much to the happiness of me and mine, and 
for whose prosperity I offer sincere prayers to 
God." 

The epitaph which Mr. Webster referred to 
in his will as one he would possibly prepare is 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 95 

now engraved on his monument at Marshfield. 
It reads as follows : 

DANIEL WEBSTER, 
Born January 18, 1782, 
Died October 24, 1852, 
Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief 
Philosophical argument, especially that 
drawn from the vastness of the universe 
in comparison with the apparent insignifi- 
cance of this globe, has sometimes shaken 
my reason for the faith which is in me; 
but my heart has always assured and re- 
assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
must be a Divine Reality. The Sermon 
on the Mount cannot be a mere human 
production. This belief enters into the 
very depth of my conscience. The whole 
history of man proves it. 

After Mr. Webster had finished his will, 
which was a very lengthy and perplexing paper, 
he said : *T thank God for strength to perform 
a sensible act." He then engaged in prayer. 
During that prayer, he was heard to utter this 
sentence, ''Heavenly Father, forgive my sins, 



96 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

and receive me to thyself through Christ Jesus." 
He concluded his prayer with this exclamation, 
"And now unto God the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Ghost, be praise for evermore. Peace 
on earth, and good will toward men. That is 
the happiness, the essence — good will toward 
men." 

A most curious incident in reference to the 
death of Daniel Webster is the fact that he 
seemed to have resolved to watch the process of 
his own dissolution, to employ his intellectual 
faculties in scrutinizing the successive steps of 
progress of that mysterious and wondrous 
change which takes place when the soul severs 
the bonds which bind it to its tenement of clay. 
This explains Mr. Webster's last words, uttered 
after all other indications of life had disap- 
peared. As if intending to assure those who 
were near him that though his body was dying 
his mind did not share in its decay he said, with 
his last expiring breath, 'T still live!" 

Webster still lives as an inspiration to the 
new generation which he apostrophized in his 
splendid Plymouth oration : "Advance, then, ye 
future generations! We would hail you, as 
you rise in your long succession to fill the places 



DANIEL WEBSTER. 97 

which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of 
existence where we are passing, and soon shall 
have passed, our own human duration. We 
bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the 
fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful 
skies and the verdant fields of New England. 
We greet your accession to the great inheritance 
which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to 
the blessings of good government and religious 
liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of 
science and the delights of learning. We wel- 
come you to the transcendent sweets of domes- 
tic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, 
and children. We welcome you to the im- 
measurable blessings of rational existence, the 
immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of 
everlasting truth!" 



MARY LYON 



^¥ 



L.ofC. 




MARY LYON. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MARY LYON. 

In writing the story of the religious life 
of Mary Lyon, one of the greatest Christian 
educators in American history, the chief diffi- 
culty lies in the embarrassment of resources. 

Miss Lyon, though reared in a Christian 
home, had not given herself definitely to the 
Christian life until she went to attend Rev. 
Joseph Emerson's school in Byfield, Mass. 
Though a believer, she did not take any stand in 
the school until a weekly prayer-meeting was 
appointed by Mr. Emerson, to which all Chris- 
tians were invited. This caused Mary much 
agitation of mind, for she felt that there was 
the dividing line. She must now class her- 
self with the children of God or with those 
who knew him not. She said that she had 
too long denied Christ before men, while her 
conscience testified that the friends of God 
were her chosen companions. After much 



102 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

deliberation she concluded to attend the meet- 
ing, and she never regretted her decision. 

While still very young, Miss Lyon wrote a 
letter to her sister on the Fourth of July, 
revealing not only the strength of her thought 
and the intensity of her patriotism, but espe- 
cially the deep bed-rock of Christian faith 
which undergirded all her thinking: "This 
day, you will recollect, completes half a cen- 
tury since the Declaration of our Independence. 
How interesting must be the reflections of 
those few who can remember that eventful 
day! And to every one the events of our 
history must be an exciting theme. Who, on 
the face of the earth, fifty years ago, could 
have anticipated such results? It is true that 
Washington, and almost all Americans who 
lived in the days of Washington, hoped for 
independence. But did they look forward to 
this time, and anticipate such a nation as this? 
Must not all believe that ^promotion comes 
neither from the East, nor from the West, 
nor from the South; but God is the Judge; 
he putteth down one, and setteth up another' ? 
Must not all exclaim. This is the linger of 
God'?" 



MARY LYON. 103 

The spirituality of her mind is clearly 
revealed in a letter written two years later than 
this last quotation. It is a letter to one of her 
friends in which, referring to her own spiritual 
life, she says : "I feel that there is one way, 
and only one, in which I can guard against 
this easily besetting sin, and that is, to seek 
daily the presence of Him who can turn the 
hearts of all as the rivers of water are turned. 
I have been too much inclined to seek to direct 
my own path. May I be saved from this. 
The Lord in his great mercy has given me 
a field of labor; so that for several years I 
have not doubted about the path of duty. The 
privilege of laboring is to be more and more 
precious. I would not choose the spot. I 
would not choose the circumstances. To be 
able to do something is a privilege of which 
I am altogether unworthy. Should I be laid 
aside, as a useless servant, it would be just. 
I would humbly seek that I may be permitted 
to labor faithfully and successfully, that I may 
be saved from those temptations which my 
feeble heart cannot withstand, and that I may 
be blessed with whatever may be desirable for 
health of body, and health of mind, and for 



I04 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

general usefulness. For little else of this world 
do I feel at present that I ought to ask. May 
I be the Lord's — spirit, and soul, and body." 

As time went on, and Mary Lyon became 
more and more intrenched in a school of her 
own, her spiritual life deepened and her activi- 
ties were intensified in two or three very impor- 
tant ways. She became greatly impressed 
with the importance of instruction in Bible 
truths, exceedingly interested in the conver- 
sion of her pupils, and more and more 
impressed with the importance of great liber- 
ality and self-sacrifice for the promotion of the 
work of foreign missions. I think she was 
one of the pioneers in what is now quite com- 
mon in many Christian colleges — expecting 
revivals in the school and definitely laboring 
for the conversion of students as the most 
important part of the college work. 

One autumn, during Miss Lyon's residence 
in Ipswich, Mass., she wrote her mother a 
letter in which she said: 'The religious state 
of our school is interesting and has been so 
for several weeks. The Spirit of God is evi- 
dently among us, operating on the hearts of 
our dear pupils. The work is silent and grad- 



MARY LYON. 105 

tial, but the effects are certain; and that it is 
the work of God there can be no doubt. Eight 
or nine have indulged hope that they have 
found the Saviour, and the state of many 
others is very encouraging. So far the work 
has been slow; but the way seems all pre- 
pared by the Holy Spirit for richer and more 
abundant displays of mercy. It does appear 
that the fields are white already to the har- 
vest. The blessing seems just ready to descend 
upon us. If there is no Achan in the camp, 
if there is no stumbling-block in the way, if 
there is not a manifest and decided fault on 
the part of Christians, we shall probably see 
greater things than these. Perhaps the Lord 
may put it into the heart of my dear mother 
to pray for these souls, that prayer of faith 
which God will hear in heaven, his holy dwell- 
ing place, and answer on earth." 

This last request of her mother was the char- 
acteristic precedent to all the great revivals in 
Mary Lyon's schools. It was her custom in 
the autumn to write to her dear Christian 
friends in all parts of the country and enlist 
them to pray for the spiritual condition of her 
school. She had wonderful faith in prayer, 



I66 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

and the results marvelously justified her 
faith. 

The next spring following the above let- 
ter to her mother she wrote to her sister a 
letter containing this remarkable paragraph : 
"I have never witnessed such an improvement 
in moral character, in ardent desire to possess 
meekness, humility, patience, and perseverance. 
A spirit of benevolence has seemed to reign 
among us to such a degree that selfishness has 
appeared to most of our little community some- 
what in its own character. . . . Many 
intelligent, refined young ladies, brought up 
in the lap of indulgence, thought they would 
be willing to go to the remotest corner of 
the world and teach a school among the most 
degraded and ignorant, might it only be said 
of them by their Master, as rt was said of 
one of old, 'She hath done what she could.' 
But, more than all, we have been visited by 
the influence of the Holy Spirit. Soon after 
the commencement of the school the gentle 
dews began to descend, and continued to 
increase until the last week, when we were 
blessed with a plentiful and refreshing shower. 
More than thirty expressed the hope that they 



MARY LYON. 107 

had found the Saviour precious to their souls. 
At the commencement of the term more than 
forty indulged in this hope." 

One source of Mary Lyon's power in devel- 
oping Christian character in her pupils v^as 
that she not only lived a Christian life her- 
self, but also regularly studied and taught the 
Bible as much as anything else. Her manner 
was simple. There was not the slightest 
appearance of speaking for effect or trying to 
speak eloquently; but her intense faith aiid 
earnestness pervaded every word and made 
her a powerful speaker. Dr. Hitchcock, a 
former president of Amherst College, says that 
the vividness with which she evidently saw and 
felt the very truths she was uttering was one 
secret of her power. If she had ever a fleet- 
ing doubt of the certainty of future retribu- 
tion, that doubt was never known or suspected 
by her most intimate friends. The founda- 
tions of her faith never wavered. The princi- 
ples of the Christian religion seemed inter- 
woven in the fibers of her soul. The world to 
come was as present to her thoughts as this 
world to her eyes. Her confidence in God 
was as simple and true as a child's in its 



io8 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

mother. She felt the Saviour to be present 
with her, her friend, her counselor, her adviser, 
sustaining and directing her as really as though 
she had seen him at her side, had leaned bodily 
on his arm, had heard his lips respond to her 
petitions, and seen his wounded but almighty 
hands reach down deliverance. 

Mary Lyon had broad and noble ideas con- 
cerning the necessity for the education of 
women and the possible blessings that would 
come from it to the world. On one occasion, 
when she was under the strain of great effort 
to obtain needed help for Mount Holyoke 
Female Seminary, she wrote a letter to a lead- 
ing minister, in the course of which she said : 
"Woman, elevated by the Christian religion, 
was designed by Providence as the principal 
educator of our race. From her entrance on 
womanhood to the end of her life this is to 
be her great business. By her influence not 
only her female friends, her scholars, and her 
daughters are to be affected, but also her sons, 
her brothers, the young men around her, and 
even the elder men, not excepting her father 
and his peers. Considering the qualifications 
which the mothers in our land now possess, 



MARY LYON. 109 

is there not a call for special effort from some 
quarter to render them aid in fitting their 
daughters to exert such an influence as is 
needed from this source on our infant republic, 
on our Christian country?" 

Such a letter would not seem daring now, 
but it took a prophet to write it seventy-five 
years ago. 

A little glimpse of Miss Lyon's thought 
about the Sabbath, as well as the use she put 
it to in the midst of her campaigns of soul- 
winning, is shown in this letter to a friend 
written in March, 1843 * "-^ large number of 
hopeful conversions have occurred in three 
days, including the Sabbath. The Sabbath is 
of indescribable value to us. There can be no 
community to which it is more important. In 
times of revival it seems always to be the 
day that God delights peculiarly to honor. At 
other times it seems to be worth more than all 
other days in bringing the thoughts into cap- 
tivity to the will of Christ." 
i I can only refer to her great work in behalf 
^ of foreign missions. So many missionaries 
went out from her seminary that worldly fam- 
ilies became afraid to send their daughters 



no RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

there to school, lest they should give them- 
selves to Christian work. After her death one 
writer suggested the breadth of her mission- 
ary work in these words: "Is she missed? 
Scarcely a State in the American Union but 
contains those she trained. Long ere this, 
amid the hunting grounds of the Sioux and 
the villages of the Cherokees the tear of the 
missionary has wet the page which has told 
of Miss Lyon's departure. The Sandwich 
Islander will ask why his white teacher's 
eye is dim as she reads her American letters. 
The swarthy African will lament with his sor- 
rowing guide who cries, 'Help, Lord, for the 
godly ceaseth.' The cinnamon groves of Cey- 
lon and the palm trees of India overshadow 
her early deceased missionary pupils, while 
those left to bear the burden and heat of the 
day will wail the saint whose prayers and 
letters they so prized. Among the Nesto- 
rians of Persia and at the base of Mount- 
Olympus will her name be breathed softly as 
the household name of one whom God hath 
taken." 



HENRY CLAY 



CHAPTER X. 

HENRY CLAY, 

Henry Clay, like his great contemporary, 
Daniel Webster, has suffered by the anecdotal 
gossip which has grown up since his death. 
In many a story we are told that he was a 
gambler and a duellist. In his case it must 
be admitted that there is far more foundation 
in fact than for the stories which have pur- 
sued Webster. In Henry Clay's youth he par- 
took largely of the works and habits of the 
people of his class at that time; and yet his 
biographers all agree that he never visited a 
gambling house in his life and was never seen 
at a gaming table set up for that purpose. In 
the early periods of his public career he did 
engage with his associates in society for the 
excitements of the games, but even during 
these years never allowed cards to be kept in 
his own house. That he did yield to occasional 
play in his youth is not more true than that 



114 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

he always condemned the practice and for the 
last thirty years of his life abstained from it. 

It is also true that twice in his younger 
life Henry Clay engaged in duels, the first 
with Humphrey Marshall, of Kentucky, and 
the second with John Randolph, of Roanoke. 
All that can be said about it is that it was 
at a time when the duello held the club over 
many men, and it was often true that a man 
had to choose between giving up his career 
and abiding by it. In later years Henry Clay 
regarded the laws of the so-called "code of 
honor'' a violation of the rights of society and 
of God and deeply felt that his own experiences 
were blemishes on his career and regretted 
beyond words his part in them. 

Many years before his death Mr. Clay defi- 
nitely accepted Christ as his Saviour and made 
a public profession of Christianity at his home 
in Kentucky, where he was baptized in the 
communion of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, and during the later years of his life 
in Washington he was in full communion with 
Trinity parish in that city. No one could have 
been more genuine, more sincere and frank 
about his beliefs, whether political or religious, 



HENRY CLAY. 115 

than Henry Clay. That oft-quoted declara- 
tion of his, ''I would rather be right than be 
President," was a key to the man's character. 
Mr. Clay's belief in the Bible, his reverence for 
Christian institutions and for the Divine Will, 
was often illustrated both by his words and 
life. 

In his farewell speech in the United States 
Senate in 1842, Mr. Clay said: ''I have waited 
in perfect and undoubting confidence for the 
ultimate triumph of justice and truth, and in 
the entire persuasion that time would settle 
all things as they should be; and that what- 
ever wrong or injustice I might experience at 
the hands of man, he to whom all hearts are 
open and fully known would by the inscru- 
table dispensations of his providence rectify all 
errors, redress all wrong, and cause ample 
justice to be done." 

In the opening of Mr. Clay's speech at Lex- 
ington, Ky., on his retirement to private life, 
soon after the above words had been uttered 
in the Senate, he said: "I feel that it is our 
first duty to express our obligations to a kind 
and bountiful Providence for the copious and 
genial showers with which he has blessed our 



ii6 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

land — a refreshment of which it stood much 
in need. For one, I offer to him my humble, 
dutiful thanks." 

It was Mr. Clay's habit, especially through 
the latter half of his life, on all proper occa- 
sions, in private and in public, to make a relig- 
ious and reverential recognition of Divine 
Providence and to speak in the most respectful 
manner of Christianity, its rites and its insti- 
tutions. He was also an habitual attendant on 
the public services of religion. On a Sunday 
evening, some time after the result of the Pres- 
idential election of 1844, which was the great 
political sunset of his life, had become known, 
while sitting at his own fireside with two 
friends, the dark prospects of the country being 
a topic for conversation, he said, pointing with 
his finger to the Bible which lay on the table 
— the only book there, showing the use that 
had been made of it : ''Gentlemen, I do not 
know anything but that Book that can recon- 
cile us to such events." 

In 1845, i^ writing to some Christian women 
of New Haven, Conn., who had made him a 
member of the American Home Missionary 
Society, Mr. Clay said : ''I request you to 



HENRY CLAY. 117 

communicate to them [the ladies of the Mis- 
sionary Society] my grateful acknowledg- 
ments for this distinguished proof of their 
highly appreciated esteem and regard and to 
assure them that I share with them a pro- 
found sense of the surpassing importance of 
the Christian religion, and believing, as I sin- 
cerely do, in its truth, I hope and trust that 
their laudable endeavors to promote and 
advance its cause may be crowned with signal 
success." 

On the death of Henry Clay one of his col- 
leagues from Kentucky, Mr. John C. Breck- 
inridge, in his address to the House of Repre- 
sentatives, said: ''But the approach of the 
destroyer had no terrors for him. No clouds 
overhung his future. He met the end with 
composure, and his pathway to the grave was 
brightened by the immortal hope which springs 
from the Christian faith. 

''Not long before his death, having just 
returned from Kentucky, I bore to him a token 
of affection from his excellent wife. Never 
can I forget his appearance, his manner, or his 
words. After speaking of his family, his 
friends, and his country, he changed the con- 



ii8 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

versation to his own future, and looking on 
me with his fine eye undimmed and his voice 
full of its original compass and melody, he 
said, 'I am not afraid to die, sir. I have 
hope, faith, and some confidence. I do not 
think any man can be entirely certain in regard 
to his future state, but I have abiding trust 
in the merits and mediation of our Saviour.' " 
Rev. Dr. Butler, who was chaplain of the 
United States Senate at the time of Mr. Clay's 
death, delivered a funeral discourse at the 
National Hotel, which was attended by the 
President of the United States, the chief 
officers of the Government, the diplomatic 
corps, and the members of the Senate and 
House of Representatives. His text was, 
**How is the strong staff broken, and the beau- 
tiful rod!" (Jeremiah 48:17.) In that pres- 
ence Dr. Butler related this interesting history 
of the religious experience of the last few 
weeks of the life of Henry Clay : *'It is since his 
withdrawal from the sittings of the Senate 
that I have been made particularly acquainted 
with his religious opinions, character, and feel- 
ings. From his first illness he expressed to 
me the persuasion that it would be fatal. From 



HENRY CLAY. 119 

that period until his death it has been my 
privilege to hold with him frequent religious 
services and conversations. He averred to 
me his full faith in the great leading doctrines 
of the Gospel — the fall and sinfulness of man, 
the divinity of Christ, the reality and necessity 
of the atonement, the need of being born again 
by the Spirit, and salvation through faith in 
the crucified Redeemer. His own personal 
hopes of salvation he ever and distinctly based 
on the promises and the grace of Christ. Strik- 
ingly perceptible on his naturally impetuous 
and impatient character was the influence of 
grace in producing submission and 'patient 
waiting for Christ' and for death. On one 
occasion he spoke to me of the pious example 
of one very near and dear to him as that which 
led him deeply to feel and earnestly to seek 
for himself the reality and blessedness of relig- 
ion. At another time he told me that he had 
been striving to form a conception of heaven; 
and he enlarged upon the mercy of that pro- 
vision by which our Saviour became a par- 
taker of our humanity, that our hearts and 
hopes might fix themselves on him. On 
another occasion, when he was supposed to be 



I20 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

very near his end, I expressed to him the hope 
that his mind and heart were at peace and 
that he was able to rest with cheerful con- 
fidence on the promises and merits of the 
Redeemer. He said with much feeling that 
he endeavored to and trusted that he did 
repose his salvation upon Christ; that it was 
too late for him to look at Christianity in the 
light of speculation ; that he had never doubted 
its truths; and that he now wished to throw 
himself upon it as a practical and blessed rem- 
edy. Very soon after this I administered to 
him the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Being 
extremely feeble, desirous of having his mind 
undiverted, no persons were present but his 
son and servant. It was a scene long to be 
remembered — there, in that still chamber, at a 
week-day noon, the tides of life all flowing 
strong around us, three disciples of the Saviour 
— the minister of God, the dying statesman, 
and his servant, a partaker of the like precious 
faith — commemorating their Saviour's dying 
love. He joined in the blessed sacrament with 
great feeling arid solemnity — now pressing his 
hands together and now spreading them forth 
as the words of the service expressed the feel- 



HENRY CLAY. 121 

ings, desires, supplications, and thanksgivings 
of his heart. After this he ralHed, and again 
I was permitted frequently to join with him 
in religious services, conversation, and prayer. 
He grew in grace and in the knowledge of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Among the 
books which he read most were Jay's 'Morn- 
ing and Evening Exercises,' 'The Life of Dr. 
Chalmers,' and 'The Christian Philosopher 
Triumphant in Death.' His hope continued to 
the end, though true and real, to be tremulous 
with humility rather than rapturous with 
assurance. When he felt most the weariness 
of his protracted sufferings it sufficed to sug- 
gest to him that his heavenly Father doubt- 
less knew that after a life so long, stirring, 
and tempted such discipline of chastening and 
suffering was needful to make him meet for 
the inheritance of the saints; and at once the 
words of meek and patient acquiescence 
escaped his lips." 



i 



STONEWALL JACKSON 



CHAPTER XL 



STONEWALL JACKSON. 

The commanding officer of his regiment 
while it was in Mexico following the Mexican 
War, Colonel Francis Taylor, was the first 
man to speak to Stonewall Jackson on the 
subject of personal religion, Taylor was an 
earnest Christian, constantly interested in the 
religious welfare of his soldiers. He made a 
deep impression on young Jackson, who after 
this conversation resolved to study the Bible 
and seek all the light within his reach. 

On his return to the United States, soon 
after settling as a professor at the Virginia 
Military Institute, Lexington, Va., he applied 
for admission into the Presbyterian Church, 
making a public profession of his faith in 
Christ on November 22, 1851. He soon 
became a deacon in the church, and with a 
soldier's training in obedience to superior com- 
mand he followed out the same principles in 



126 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

his church duties, going to his pastor as his 
chief for his ''orders," and "reporting" per- 
formance of them in a mihtary way. 

Few men had such reverence for ministers 
of the Gospel as had Jackson, and he often 
said that, had his education fitted him for it 
and had he more of the gift of speaking, he 
would have entered the pulpit. In a letter to 
his aunt, Mrs. Neale, he said, 'The subject of 
becoming a herald of the Cross has often seri- 
ously engaged my attention, and I regard it 
as the most noble of all professions. It was 
the profession of our divine Redeemer, and 
I should not be surprised were I to die upon 
a foreign field, clad in ministerial armor, fig;ht- 
ing under the banner of Jesus. What could be 
more glorious? But my conviction is that I 
am doing good here, and that for the present 
I am where God would have me be. Within 
the last few days I have felt an unusual relig- 
ious joy. I do rejoice to walk in the love of 
God. My heavenly Father has condescended 
to use me as an instrument in getting up a 
large Sabbath school for the negroes here. He 
has greatly blessed it, and, I trust, all who are 
connected with it." 



^^STONEWALL" JACKSON. 127 

So scrupulous was Jackson in the perform- 
ance of his duties that he would not neglect 
even the smallest, saying, ''One instance would 
be a precedent for another, and thus my rules 
would be broken down." After his conscience 
had decided upon questions of right and wrong, 
his resolution and independence enabled him 
to carry out his principles with a total disre- 
gard of the opinions of the world. He thought 
it a great weakness in others to care what 
impression their conduct made upon public 
opinion, if their consciences were only clear. 
The fear of the Lord was the only fear he 
knew. After he became a Christian he set 
his face against all worldly conformity, giving 
up dancing, theater-going, and every amuse- 
ment that had a tendency to lead his thoughts 
and heart away from holy things. When a 
question was raised as to the right or wrong 
of indulgences that many consider innocent 
he would say, pleasantly: "Well, I know it 
is not wrong not to do it, so I am going to be 
on the safe side." His rule was never to 
make any compromise with his principles, but 
there was not a particle of asceticism or gloom 
in his religion. It shed perpetual sunshine 



128 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

upon his life, and his cheerful serenity was 
like the full flowing of a placid stream. His 
faith and trust led him to feel that nothing 
could happen to him but what was sent in wis- 
dom and love by his heavenly Father. One 
of his favorite texts of Scripture was: "We 
know that all things work together for good 
to them that love God." 

Mrs. Jackson in her biography tells us that 
soon after he united with the church, his 
pastor, in a public discourse, urged his flock 
to more faithfulness in attending the weekly 
prayer-meeting, and enjoined upon the church 
officers and members especially their duty to 
lead in prayer. Hearing this, Major Jackson, 
for that was his rank at the time, called to 
inquire if he was among those who were 
admonished not to be deterred from their duty 
by modesty or false shame. He said he had 
not been used to public speaking; he was natu- 
rally diffident, and feared an effort might prove 
anything but edifying to the assembly; "but,'* 
he continued, "you are my pastor, and the 
spiritual guide of the church ; and if you think 
it my duty, then I shall waive my reluctance 
and make the effort to lead in prayer, however 



"STONEWALL" JACKSON. 129 

painful it may be." Thus authorized to call 
upon him, if he thought proper, after a time 
the pastor did so. In responding to the request 
Jackson's embarrassment was so great that the 
service was almost as painful to the audience 
as it was to himself. The call was not repeated, 
and after waiting some weeks the Major again 
called upon the pastor to know if he had 
refrained from a second call from unwilling- 
ness to inflict distress upon him through his 
extreme diffidence. The good pastor was 
obliged to admit that he did shrink from 
requiring of him a duty which was rendered 
at such a sacrifice, lest his own enjoyment of 
the meeting be destroyed. His reply had the 
true soldierly spirit : "Yes, but my comfort or 
discomfort is not the question ; if it is my duty 
to lead in prayer, then I must persevere in it 
until I learn to do it aright ; and I wish you to 
discard all consideration for my feelings." 
The next time he was called upon he suc- 
ceeded better in repressing his agitation, and 
in the course of time he was able to pour out 
his heart before God with as much freedom 
in a public meeting as at his own family 
prayers, which were never omitted. 



I30 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Stonewall Jackson was as conscientious 
about the use of his money as he was about 
his time and influence. In his giving for relig- 
ious purposes he adopted the Hebrew system of 
tithes, contributing every year one-tenth of his 
income to the church. 

No Christian man was ever more careful 
of his personal habits than Stonewall Jackson. 
He abstained from the use of all intoxicating 
drinks, solely from principle, having a fond- 
ness for them, as he himself confessed, and 
for that reason never daring to indulge his 
taste. During the war, when asked by a 
brother officer to join him in a social glass, 
he replied : ''No, I thank you, but I never use 
it; I am more afraid of it than of Federal 
bullets." Nor did he use tobacco in any form, 
and for many years not even tea and coffee, 
believing that they were injurious to his 
health. 

As an instance of the alacrity with which, 
once convinced that a thing was right to do, 
he would act, his biographer relates that on 
one occasion, when he had been talking of 
self-abnegation and making rather light of it, 
a friend suggested that he had not been called 



"STONEWALL" JACKSON. 131 

upon to endure it, and supposed a case : ''Imag- 
ine that the providence of God seemed to direct 
you to drop every scheme of life and of per- 
sonal advancement and go on a mission to 
the heart of Africa for the rest of your days, 
v^ould you go?" His eyes flashed as he 
instantly replied: ''I v^^ould go without my 
hat!" 

This same friend once asked him what was 
his understanding of the Bible command to 
be ''instant in prayer" and to "pray without 
ceasing." "I can give you," he said, "my 
idea of it by illustration, if you will allow it 
and will not think that I am setting myself up 
as a model for others. I have so fixed the 
habit in my own mind that I never raise a 
glass of water to my lips without lifting my 
heart to God in thanks and prayer for the 
water of life. Then, when we take our meals, 
there is the grace. Whenever I drop a letter 
in the post-office, I send a petition along with 
it for God's blessing upon its mission and the 
person to whom it is sent. When I break the 
seal of a letter just received, I stop to ask 
God to prepare me for its contents and make 
it a messenger of good. When I go to my 



132 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

class room and await the arrangement of the 
cadets in their places, that is my time to inter- 
cede with God for them. And so in every act 
of the day I had made the practice habitual." 

''And don't you sometimes forget to do 
this?" asked his friend. 

"I can hardly say that I do; the habit has 
become almost as fixed as to breathe." 

His friend, wishing to push the matter still 
further, asked him : "Major, suppose you 
should lose your health irreparably; do you 
think you could be happy still?" 

He answered: ''Yes, I should be happy 
still." 

"Well, suppose in addition to life-long ill- 
ness you should become suddenly blind; do 
you believe your serenity would remain 
unclouded ?" 

He paused a moment, as if to weigh fully 
every word he uttered, and then said: "I am 
sure of it; even such a misfortune could not 
make me doubt the love of God." 

Still further to test him, and knowing his 
impatience of anything that even bordered on 
dependence, it was urged : "But if, in addition 
to blindness and incurable infirmity and pain, 



^'STONEWALL" JACKSON. 133 

you had to receive grudging charity from 
those on whom you had no claim — what 
then?" 

There was a strange reverence in his lifted 
eyes, and an exalted expression over his whole 
face, as he replied, with slow deliberateness, 
*'If it were God's will, I think I could lie 
there content, a hundred years!" 

Mrs. Jackson gives a very tender account 
of her husband's conduct at the breaking out 
of the war. He had hoped and prayed for 
peace and with great sorrow saw the last hope 
fade away. The morning he was to leave he 
sent a message to his pastor requesting him 
to come to the barracks and offer a prayer with 
the regiment before its departure, and the last 
thing he did was to return to his home, take 
his Bible, and read that beautiful chapter in 
Corinthians beginning with the sublime hope 
of the resurrection — 'Tor we know that if 
our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
solved, we have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
Then he knelt down beside his wife and com- 
mitted himself and her whom he loved to the 
protecting care of his Father in heaven. Never 



134 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

was a prayer more fervent and touching. His 
voice was so choked with emotion that he 
could scarcely utter the words, and one of 
his most earnest petitions was that, "if con- 
sistent with his will, God would still avert 
the threatening danger and grant us peace!" 
From the beginning of the war Stonewall 
Jackson manifested the deepest interest in the 
religious welfare of his men, and made active 
efforts to promote the same. He once said to 
a colporter, '*'You are more than welcome to 
my camp, and I shall be delighted to do what 
I can to promote your work. I am more 
anxious than I can tell you that my men shall 
be good soldiers of the Cross." One who 
heard him lead a prayer meeting for the sol- 
diers a few days before the battle of Chan- 
cellorsville says, "I shall never forget that 
meeting. The reading of the Scriptures, the 
sweet songs of praise, the simple, earnest, prac- 
tical talk, and the tender, appropriate, fervent 
prayer of the great soldier will linger in my 
memory through life, and will be recalled, I 
doubt not^ when I meet him on the brighter 
shore." 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



CHAPTER XII. 

WASHINGTON IRVING. 

Any one who has ever been at Tarrytown, 
N. Y., in the summer time and strolled past 
Christ Episcopal Church cannot have failed 
to note with admiring attention the splendid 
ivy vine which has climbed its way upward 
until it has covered the tower with its great 
cloak of living green, changing into varying 
shades of beauty as the summer wanes into the 
autumn. If some proud citizen has told the 
visitor the story of that vine it has added very 
much to its interest. That ivy vine was 
planted by Washington Irving with his own 
hand, from a cutting made from the vine 
which adorns his beautiful and historic Sunny- 
side, and which, in turn, came from a cutting 
which the brilliant author brought from the 
ruins of Melrose Abbey. Perhaps there is not 
in all America a more picturesquely historic 
vine. This vine is a living witness to Wash- 



138 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ington Irving's interest in the Christian 
Church. If, now, you go inside the church, 
you will find above the pew where he used 
to sit a beautiful memorial tablet containing 
the Irving coat-of-arms, two royal supporters 
holding a shield emblazoned with holly leaves, 
having as a crest a hand holding a bunch of 
holly. On this tablet there is the following 
inscription : 

WASHINGTON IRVING 

Born in the City of Nezv York, April j, 1783. 
For many years a Communicant and 
Warden of the Church, and Respect- 
fully one of its Delegates to the 
Convention of the Diocese. 
Loved, honored, revered, he fell asleep in Jesus 
March 28, i8§p. 

The venerable pastor of that picturesquely 
adorned church in Tarrytown, Rev. Dr. J. 
Sheldon Spencer, gave Dr. Ferdinand C. Igle- 
hart some exceedingly interesting reminis- 
cences of the religious life of Irving. Among 
other things, he said : *'My acquaintance with 
Washington Irving began in 1853, and it soon 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 139 

ripened into friendship under circumstances 
most tender and affecting. At the beginning 
of my ministry in Christ Church, Tarrytown, 
N. Y., my wife died. Irving was one of the 
first to call upon me and proffer me the com- 
fort and strength of his tender sympathy. The 
warm and prolonged pressure of his hand 
made me feel the power of his sympathy, and 
then followed these few words, softly and 
gently spoken, 'They who minister to others 
must not themselves refuse consolation.' In 
my sorrow it was a personal revelation of 
human tenderness, next to the benediction of 
the Master. 

'T can never forget the embarrassment I 
first experienced in preaching before him. I 
painfully anticipated the criticism of one who 
stood in the foremost rank of all authors. But 
I soon found that there was no more devout or 
attentive hearer in the church than he. He 
sat in his pew, with his head resting lightly 
on his hand, in that pensive attitude which one 
of his portraits exhibits. He would thus sit, 
with his eyes intent upon the speaker, as one 
anxious to receive some truth for his soul's 
health. With all his powers of mind he knew 



140 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

of no other spiritual sustenance than the Gos- 
pel of Christ and its plain, simple truths. 

"During my first interview with him at Sun- 
nyside he introduced the subject of church 
music, of which he was particularly fond, 
though I do not think he could sing a note; 
but the sentiment and the melody deeply 
affected him. He referred to the Gloria in 
Excelsis. Repeating the words as if they were 
the joyful refrain of his own heart, he 
exclaimed, his eyes filling with tears and his 
voice trembling with emotion, 'That is relig- 
ion, Mr. Spencer; that is true religion for 
you. I never hear the hymn without having 
my mind lifted up and my heart made better 
for it.' 

"During another visit he spoke to me of 
this text, which had profoundly impressed him : 
*My son, give me thine heart.' Years before 
he must have been deeply impressed with it, 
for, on looking over a volume of Bishop Wain- 
wright's sermons, I found one on the text, 
accompanied by the statement that it was sug- 
gested to the bishop by Washington Irving as 
a text which, more than all others, he should 
like to hear treated in a sermon. On another 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 141 

occasion, on the church porch, he expressed 
with great feehng the same general thoughts, 
in words which may be classed with the best 
and most beautiful he ever uttered : 'Religion 
is of the heart, not of the head. We may, with 
the understanding, approach the vestibule of 
the Temple; but it is only with the heart that 
we can enter its holy precincts and draw near 
its sacred altar.' " 

Washington Irving' s parents were Scotch 
Covenanters, and his father was a deacon in 
the church, a most sedate and God-fearing 
man, always very serious in his intercourse 
with his family, without sympathy in the 
amusements of his children. Though he was 
not without tenderness in his nature, the exhi- 
bition of it was repressed on principle. He 
was a man of high character and honor, 
greatly esteemed by his associates. He endeav- 
ored to bring up his children in sound relig- 
ious principles and to leave no room in their 
lives for trivial things. One of the two weekly 
half-holidays was required for the catechism, 
and the only relaxation from the three church 
services on Sunday was the reading of "Pil- 
grim's Progress," 



142 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Charles Dudley Warner in his biography of 
Irving remarks that this cold and severe dis- 
cipline at home would have been intolerable 
but for the more lovingly demonstrative and 
impulsive character of the mother, whose gen- 
tle nature and fine intellect won the tender ven- 
eration of her children. Of the father they 
stood in awe; his conscientious piety, thor- 
oughly genuine, nevertheless failed to arouse 
any religious sensibility in them, and they 
revolted from a teaching which seemed to 
regard everything that was pleasant as wicked. 

Washington Irving was a bright, happy 
child, sportive and gladsome in his disposi- 
tion ; and one of his biographers says that this 
used to give even his mother some anxiety, 
and she would look at him with a half-mourn- 
ful admiration and exclaim, ''Oh, Washing- 
ton ! If you were only good !" While he was 
still very young and was required to attend 
the church of his parents, he slipped away 
at other hours to attend the Trinity Episcopal 
Church in New York City, where the family 
were then living. His conversion was a very 
striking occurrence. When he first began to 
attend Trinity he found the service of the ritual 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 143 

tedious to him and was restless under it, wait- 
ing impatiently till it was over, and then set- 
tled himself to hear the sermon ; but one Sun- 
day as he was entering the church the solemn 
exhortation to confession was being read, and 
the thought struck him that he, too, had sins 
to confess, and so he fell upon his knees and 
joined in the humble confession of sins; and 
from that day forward, until the end of his 
life, the church service was to him an increas- 
ing and never-ending source of comfort and 
delight. 

Dr. Spencer, the pastor of Christ Church, 
Tarrytown, already quoted, gives a number of 
interesting incidents connected with Irving' s 
church life. He says that Mr. Irving took 
an active part in the practical work of the 
church. After his return from Spain as 
United States Minister he was elected warden 
of the church. It became his duty among 
other things to take up the collection. Many 
a faithful church-worker in other denomina- 
tions will appreciate the famous author's feel- 
ings on that subject. On coming out of the 
church one Sunday Irving said, his eyes twin- 
kling with humor, ''I have passed that plate 



144 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

so often up and down the aisle that I begin 
to feel like a highwayman. I feel as if I 
could stop a man on the road and say, 'Your 
money or your life!' " 

An amusing story, yet one having an illus- 
trative point in regard to Irving' s nature, is 
told. At one of the vestry meetings a Mr. 
Holmes, one of the members, was accompanied 
by an inoffensive pet dog which took refuge 
at his feet. There was an animated discus- 
sion. Mr. Holmes in an earnest manner 
pressed his views upon the meeting, and the 
discussion threatened to be prolonged and 
serious. When he had ended, Irving, who 
was always a peacemaker, arose and inquired 
of the chairman whether Mr. Holmes should 
be allowed to put them all in bodily terror, 
adding that he had not only come to advo- 
cate his measure, but had brought with him 
a fierce beast to overawe the vestry and con- 
trol their votes. "And," he added, pointing 
to the little dog, "there he is now by his 
side, keeping guard." The irresistible droll- 
ery of his speech and manner was like oil upon 
the troubled waters of the discussion and dif- 
fused a feeling of perfect good-nature over 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 145 

the meeting which gave a satisfactory settle- 
ment of the question. 

Irving was passionately fond of children, 
and he had for them a constant charm. It was 
a common thing for them to flock about him on 
Sunday at the church door and decorate him 
with flowers and slip bouquets into his hand. 
The tender words and smiles which he always 
had ready for them were to their innocent 
hearts the rarest of treasures. In all his asso- 
ciation with his neighbors and fellow church- 
members he was natural and simple, utterly 
without affectation; and while a vein of mirth 
and humor was ever bubbling up in his speech, 
there was never anything but kindness mani- 
fest in it. 

Washington Irving's faith in God and his 
love of humanity were very simple, and his 
life and literature were all of a piece with 
this simple faith. Only two years before 
Irving's death Bishop W. F. Mallalieu, then a 
senior in Wesleyan University, at Middletown, 
Conn., during the spring vacation took a little 
trip, exploring both sides of the Hudson River 
from New York to the Catskills. This trip 
took him through Tarrytown, and, having a 



146 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

schoolboy's worship for heroes, he called, 
entirely unannounced and without recommen- 
dation, at the author's home at Sunny side. An 
elderly gentleman opened the door, and the 
young student inquired: 

''Have I the honor of addressing Washing- 
ton Irving?" 

He replied, "Yes." 

Mallalieu immediately said, "Mr. Irving, I 
am a student in my senior year in Wesleyan 
University, Middletown, Connecticut. As far 
distant as that is, we have often heard of you, 
and have read many of your writings. I was 
visiting points of interest along the Hudson, 
and I could not deny myself the pleasure of 
calling on you." 

Mallalieu then began to tell him that he had 
no introduction, when Irving swung the door 
open, and in the most cheery tone said : "You 
have no need of an introduction; you have 
attended to that yourself. Come in, come in." 

He then proceeded to give the young student 
an hour the memory of which has been "as 
ointment poured forth" through all the years 
since. 

Irving's literature was like his life. With- 



WASHINGTON IRVING. 147 

out exception his books are wholesome and 
full of sweetness and charm. There was never 
either sting or poison in his humor. Though 
his mirth amuses, it is an innocent gladness 
that leaves no stain upon the soul. 



CYRUS WEST FIELD 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CYRUS WEST FIELD. 

Cyrus West Field, the man whose name 
will be forever associated with the laying of the 
first ocean cable between England and America, 
was the seventh son of Rev. Dr. David 
Dudley Field, for more than sixty years a 
distinguished Congregational minister. The 
religious life of Cyrus Field was of the gen- 
uine, rugged type one might expect from such 
an ancestor. Although the old Puritan rigors 
vanished and a breadth and catholicity of view 
developed, the sincerity of his faith was as 
sure as the New England granite. 

While still very young Cyrus came to New 
York and was apprenticed to A. T. Stewart, 
the famous merchant. Soon afterwards, in 
writing home to his mother, he added this 



152 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

postscript! 'Tell father that I have read 
through the Pilgrim's Progress which he gave 
me when at home, and that I like it very much ; 
and also that Goodrich and myself take turns 
in reading a chapter in the Bible every night 
before we go to bed." 

The boy in the boarding house who reads his 
Bible and has his nightly prayer with his 
roommate is fitting himself well for the same 
kind of honesty and integrity which caused 
Cyrus Field, years afterwards, when he had 
failed in business and had been discharged 
from a large part of his indebtedness, to care- 
fully search out his old creditors as soon as 
he regained prosperity and pay every one of 
them together with seven per cent, interest 
for the ten years that had elapsed. The 
Bible and family prayers make honesty like 
that. 

The entire story of the laying of the first 
Atlantic cable is perfumed with the reverence 
and Christian faith of the great man who con- 
ceived the idea and pushed it, through inde- 
scribable opposition and difficulty, to final suc- 
cess. In 1858 his friend and pastor, Rev. Dr. 
William Adams, of New York City, wrote a 



CYRUS WEST FIELD. 153 

letter to Mr. Field in which is this paragraph : 
''1 do not know whether your homeward 
thoughts ever include your minister, but mine 
very frequently traverse the sea towards you 
and your noble enterprise. We have all 
watched with great interest the noble bearing 
of your good wife in all the sacrifices which 
she makes for you and the cause you so gal- 
lantly represent. These are things not so much 
thought of by the great world; but, after all, 
they are the chief elements in that great price 
which we are compelled to pay for everything 
good and great." 

Cyrus Field was a man of strong faith in 
God, and it steadied his life. His first mes- 
sage to the Associated Press on the laying of 
the first cable contained these words, *'By the 
blessing of divine Providence it has suc- 
ceeded." 

At that time his family were living in Stock- 
bridge, Mass. The wife and children were 
spending the afternoon quietly, when all were 
startled by the appearance of Mr. Field's 
mother. Almost breathless with excitement, 
she exclaimed : "Mary, the cable is laid. 
Thomas, believest thou this?' " The good 



154 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

wife dropped her face in her hands and gave 
herself up to silent thanksgiving to God for 
his goodness. His brother, David Dudley 
Field, immediately telegraphed his congratu- 
lations in these words : ''Your family is all at 
Stockbridge, and well. The joyful news arrived 
there Thursday, and almost overwhelmed your 
wife. Father rejoiced like a boy, mother was 
wild with delight. Brothers, sisters, all were 
overjoyed. Bells were rung, guns fired; chil- 
dren, let out of school, shouted. The cable is 
laid! The cable is laid!' The village was 
in a tumult of joy. My dear brother, I con- 
gratulate you. God bless you." 

Dr. William Adams wrote Mrs. Field a 
beautiful letter, from which I quote this inter- 
esting paragraph: ''What shall I say to you? 
Words can give no idea of my enthusiasm. 
As your pastor I have known somewhat of 
your own private griefs and trials, and the 
sacrifices which you have made for the success 
of your noble husband. Now the hour of 
reward and coronation has come for him and 
for you. I wrote to him yesterday, directing 
to New York, to be ready for him when he 
came. I was at Andover when the news came. 



CYRUS WEST FIELD. 155 

in company with several hundred clergymen. 
We cheered, and we sang praises to God. I 
was so glad that your husband inserted in his 
first dispatch a recognition of divine Provi- 
dence in his success. 

^'I sprang to my feet; I told the company 
that I was the pastor of Mr. Field, and that 
the last thing which he had said to me before 
starting was his request that we should pray 
for him; and then I had an opportunity to 
pay a tribute to his perseverance, his energy, 
and his genius, which I did, you may be sure, 
in no measured terms." 

This triumph was only temporary, for the 
cable soon dropped into silence, and then fol- 
lowed long years of mingled hope and dis- 
appointment succeeding each other at rapid 
intervals. Few indeed are the men who would 
not have given up in despair. But Field per- 
severed. He tells of one day when he stood 
on shipboard, "The day was cold and cheerless, 
the air was misty, and the wind roughened 
the sea; and when I thought of all that we 
had passed through, of the hopes thus far 
disappointed, of the friends saddened by our 
reverses, of the few that remained to sustain 



156 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

us, I felt a load at my heart almost too heavy 
to bear, though my confidence was firm and my 
determination fixed." And there that load 
remained until the end. 

At last, in 1856, when success had come 
again, he telegraphed his wife, "All well. 
Thank God, the cable has been successfully laid 
and is in perfect working order. I am sure 
that no one will be as thankful to God as you 
and our dear children. Now we shall be a 
united family." 

It is hard for the younger generation, who 
have been accustomed not only to one cable 
but to several, and have never thought of 
continents so widely separated as they were in 
the old times, when it took weeks to receive an 
answer to a communication sent across the 
ocean, to appreciate how much Field's great 
work meant to the world. Henry Ward 
Beecher, at a public celebration held at Fish- 
kill, speaking of the laying of the cable, said: 
"I thought all the way in riding down here 
to-night how strange it will seem to have that 
silent cord lying in the sea, perfectly noiseless, 
perfectly undisturbed by war or by storm, by 
the paddles of steamers, by the thunders of 



CYRUS WEST FIELD. 157 

navies above it, far down beyond all anchor's 
reach, beyond all plumbing interference. There 
will be earthquakes that will shake the other 
world, and the tidings of them will come under 
the silent sea, and we shall know them upon 
the hither side, but the cord will be undis- 
turbed, though it bears earthquakes to us. 
Markets will go up, and fortunes will be made 
down in the depths of the sea. The silent 
highway will carry it, without noise, to us. 
Fortunes will go down, and bankruptcies spread 
dismay, and the silent road will bear this mes- 
sage without a jar and without disturbance. 
Without voice or speech, it will communicate 
thunders and earthquakes and tidings of war 
and revolutions and all those things that fill 
the air with clamor. They will come quick as 
thought from the scene of their first fever and 
excitement, flash quick as thought and as silent 
on their passage, and then break out on this 
side with fresh tremor and excitement. To me 
the functions of that wire seem, in some sense, 
sublime — itself impassive, quiet, still, yet 
moving either hemisphere and its ex- 
tremities by the tidings that are to issue 
out of it." 



158 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

The peroration of this same address was 
splendid : "While thus we are enlarging the 
facilities of action let us see to it that we main- 
tain at home domestic virtue, individual intelli- 
gence; that we spread our common schools, 
that we multiply our newspapers throughout 
the land, that we make books more plenty than 
the leaves of the forest trees. Let every man 
among us be a reader and thinker and owner, 
and so he will be an actor. And when all 
men through the globe are readers, when all 
men through the globe are thinkers, when all 
men through the globe are actors — are actors 
because they think right — when they speak 
nation to nation, when from the rising of the 
sun to the going down of the same there is 
not alone a free intercourse of thought, but 
one current of heart, virtue, religion, love — 
then the earth will have blossomed and con- 
summated its history." 

But no utterance of the time was more 
splendid in every way or more thoroughly 
voiced the lofty purpose and the noble 
feeling which had sustained Cyrus W. 
Field through all his years of struggle than 
the "Cable Hymn," by John Greenleaf 



CYRUS WEST FIELD. 159 

Whittier. The three closing verses illustrate 
its sweep of vision and its loftiness of 
spirit : 

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 

Beneath the deep so far, 
The bridal robe of earth's accord, 

The funeral shroud of war. 

For, lo ! the fall of ocean's wall, 
Space mocked, and time outrun; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one! 

The poles unite, the zones agree, 

The tongues of striving cease; 
As on the Sea of Galilee, 

The Christ is whispering peace! 

On December 2, 1890, Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus 
W. Field celebrated their golden wedding. 
From all over the world there came words of 
greeting and good-will. From England a most 
loving letter came, signed by a large number 
of names, among which were the Duke of 
Argyll, Canon Farrar, Mr. Gladstone, and 
others whose names are known the world over. 
President Henry Morton of the Stevens Insti- 
tute read the following poem, which will make 



i6o RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

a fit conclusion to our study of the Christian 
life of this very remarkable man : 

Golden light the sun is shedding, 

Ushering in this golden wedding, 

As he did on that bright day 

Fifty golden years away. 

Then as now the "golden flowers," 

Lingering after summer's hours, 

The chrysanthemums foretold 

Anniversary of gold. 

Golden love and golden truth 

To gold age from golden youth, 

In the fire of life, thrice tried, 

Pure themselves, yet purified 

By the sorrows borne together. 

By the stress of stormy weather ; 

This pure gold, outlasting earth, 

Proves its own celestial birth. 

And shall shine with golden light. 

Star-like, from Heaven's dome of night. 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ROBERT E. LEE. 

Chaplain J. William Jones, in his "Per- 
sonal Reminiscences of Robert E. Lee," tells us 
that while the army of Northern Virginia con- 
fronted General Meade at Mine Run, near the 
end of November, 1863, and a battle was 
momentarily expected, General Lee, with a 
number of general and staff officers, was riding 
down his line of battle, when, just in the rear 
of General A. P. Hill's position, the cavalcade 
suddenly came upon a party of soldiers 
engaged in a prayer meeting. An attack from 
the enemy seemed imminent — already the 
sharpshooting along the skirmish-line had 
begun — the artillery was belching forth its 
hoarse thunder, and the mind and heart of the 
great chieftain was full of the expected com- 
bat. Yet, as he saw those ragged veterans 
bowed in prayer, Lee instantly dismounted, 
uncovered his head^ and devoutly joined in 



i64 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the simple worship. The rest of the party at 
once followed his example, and those humble 
privates found themselves leading the devotions 
of their loved and honored chieftains. 

It is related that as his army was crossing 
the James, in 1864, and hurrying on to the 
defense of Petersburg, General Lee turned aside 
from the road, and kneeling in the dust 
devoutly joined a minister present in earnest 
prayer that God would give him wisdom and 
grace in the new stage of the campaign upon 
which he was then entering. 

Rev. Dr. T. V. Moore, in a memorial ser- 
mon on Lee, said that on one occasion he had 
the opportunity to render him a slight ser- 
vice — so slight that, knowing the General to be 
ill and under a terrible strain at the time, he 
expected no acknowledgment; but to his sur- 
prise he received a letter thanking him for the 
service, and adding: "I thank you especially 
that I have a place in your prayers. No human 
power can avail us without the blessing of 
God, and I rejoice to know that, in this crisis 
of our affairs, good men everywhere are sup- 
plicating him for his favor and protection." 

One day when General Lee was inspecting 



ROBERT E. LEE. 165 

the lines, he met a humble colporter who was 
distributing tracts. The General asked him if 
he ever had calls for prayer-books, and said 
that if he would call at his headquarters he 
would give him some for distribution, explain- 
ing that a friend in Richmond had given him 
a new prayer-book, and upon his saying that 
he would give his old one that he had used 
ever since the Mexican war to some soldier, 
the friend had offered him a dozen new books 
for the old one, and he had, of course, accepted 
so good an offer, and now had twelve instead 
of one to give away. The colporter called at 
the appointed hour. The General had gone 
out on some important matter, but even amid 
his pressing duties had left the prayer-books 
with a member of his staff, with instructions 
concerning them. He had written on the 
flyleaf of each, "Presented by R. E. 
Lee." No doubt they are still cherished as 
precious legacies and heirlooms in South- 
ern homes. 

With the close of the war the piety of Gen- 
eral Lee seems to have mellowed and deepened, 
and his career as a college president at Lexing- 
ton, Va., gave bright evidences of vital, active 



i66 RELIGIOUS LIFE, 

godliness. He was a most regular attendant 
upon all the services of his own church, his 
seat in the college-chapel was never vacant 
unless he was kept away by sickness, and if 
there was a union prayer-meeting anywhere, 
or a service of general interest in any of the 
churches of Lexington, General Lee was sure 
to be among the most devout attendants. His 
pew in his own church was immediately in 
front of the chancel, his seat in the chapel 
was the second from the pulpit, and he seemed 
always to prefer his seat near the preacher's 
stand. He always devoutly knelt during 
prayer, and his attitude during the entire ser- 
vice was that of an interested listener or a 
reverential participant. 

General Lee was emphatically a man of 
prayer. He was accustomed to pray in his 
family and to have his seasons of secret prayer 
which he allowed nothing, however pressing, 
to interrupt. He was also a constant reader 
and diligent student of the Bible and had his 
regular seasons for this delightful exercise. 
Even amid his most active campaigns he found 
time to read every day some portion of God's 
Word. 



ROBERT E. LEE. 167 

Not only did General Lee read the Bible 
himself, but he always manifested the liveliest 
interest in circulating it among others. Dur- 
ing the war he was an active promoter of 
Bible distribution among his soldiers, and soon 
after settling in Lexington he accepted the 
presidency of the ''Rockbridge Bible Society" 
and continued to discharge its duties up to the 
time of his death. In his letter accepting this 
office, he wrote: "I have delayed replying to 
your letter informing me of my having been 
elected president of the 'Rockbridge Bible Soci- 
ety,' not for want of interest in the subject, but 
from an apprehension that I should not be 
able to perform the duties of the position in 
such manner as to advance the high object pro- 
posed. Having, however, been encouraged by 
your kind assurance, and being desirous of 
co-operating in any way I can in extending the 
inestimable knowledge of the priceless truths 
of the Bible, I accept the position assigned 
me." 

General Lee manifested the deepest concern 
for the spiritual welfare of the young men 
under his care. Soon after becoming president 
of Washington College he said with deep feel- 



i68 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ing to one of the pastors of the town : "I shall 
be disappointed, sir — I shall fail in the leading 
object that brought me here — unless these 
young men become real Christians ; and I wish 
you and others of your sacred profession to 
do all you can to accomplish this." To another 
pastor he said, ''I dread the thought of any 
student going away from the college without 
becoming a sincere Christian." 

At the beginning of each session of the 
college he was accustomed to address an auto- 
graph letter to the pastors of Lexington, invit- 
ing them to arrange for conducting in turn the 
regular chapel services of the college, asking 
them to induce the students to attend their sev- 
eral churches and Bible classes, and urging 
them to do all in their power for the spiritual 
good of the students. Not content with this 
general request, he prepared lists of the stu- 
dents connected with particular churches and 
handed these to the several pastors with the 
earnestly expressed wish that they would con- 
sider these young men under their especial 
watch-care and give them every attention in 
their power. And he would frequently ask a 
pastor about individual students — whether 



ROBERT E. LEE. 169 

they belonged to his Bible class or were regular 
in their attendance at church. 

At the "Concert of Prayer for Colleges" in 
Lexington, in 1869, a pastor present made an 
address in which he urged that the great need 
of the colleges was a genuine, pervasive 
revival; that this could come only from God; 
and that, inasmuch as he has promised his 
Holy Spirit to those who ask him, they should 
make special prayer for a revival in the col- 
leges of the country, and more particularly in 
Washington College and the Virginia Military 
Institute. At the close of the meeting Gen- 
eral Lee went to him and said, with more 
than his usual warmth : ''I wish, sir, to thank 
you for your address; it was just what 
we needed; our great want is a revival 
which will bring these young men to 
Christ." 

During the great revival which followed 
in the Virginia Military Institute, he said one 
day to his pastor: ''That is the best news I 
have heard since I have been in Lexington. 
Would that we could have such a revival in 
all our colleges !" 

Rev. Dr. Kirkpatrick, Professor of Moral 



170 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Philosophy at Washington College at the 
time, relates the following concerning a con- 
versation he had with General Lee just a short 
time previous to his fatal illness : "We had 
been conversing for some time respecting 
the religious welfare of the students. Gen- 
eral Lee's feelings then became so intense that 
for a time his utterance was choked; but 
recovering himself, with his eyes overflowing 
with tears, his lips quivering with emotion, and 
both hands raised, he exclaimed, 'O doctor! 
if I could only know that all the young men 
in the college were good Christians I should 
have nothing more to desire.' " 

General Lee was a member of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church and was sincerely 
attached to the church of his choice; but his 
large heart took in Christians of every name; 
he treated ministers of all denominations with 
the most marked courtesy and respect; and 
it may be truly said of him that he had a 
heart and hand "ready to every good work." 
When once asked his opinion of a certain 
theological question which was exciting con- 
siderable discussion, he replied, "Oh! I never 
trouble myself about such questions ; my chief 



ROBERT E. LEE. 171 

concern is to try to be a humble, earnest 
Christian myself." 

An application of a Jewish soldier for per- 
mission to attend certain ceremonies of his 
synagogue in Richmond was endorsed by his 
captain : ''Disapproved. If such applications 
were granted, the whole army would turn 
Jews or shaking Quakers." When the paper 
came before General Lee he endorsed on it : 
''Approved, and respectfully returned to Cap- 
tain , with the advice that he should 

always respect the religious views and feel- 
ings of others." 

The venerable pastor of one of the churches 
in Lexington, speaking at General Lee's 
funeral services, said, with deep feeling: "He 
belonged to one branch of the church and I 
to another; yet in my intercourse with him 
— an intercourse rendered far more frequent 
and intimate by the tender sympathy he felt 
in my ill-health — the thought never occurred 
to me that we belonged to different churches. 
His love for the truth and for all that is good 
and useful was such as to render his brotherly 
kindness and charity as boundless as were the 
wants and sorrows of his race." 



172 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

One of his biographers closes his summary 
of the rehgious character of General Lee by 
this emphatic statement : "If I have ever come 
in contact with a sincere, devout Christian — 
one who, seeing himself to be a sinner, trusted 
alone in the merits of Christ, who humbly tried 
to walk the path of duty, 'looking unto Jesus' 
as the author and finisher of his faith, and 
whose piety constantly exhibited itself in his 
daily life — that man was General Robert E. 
Lee.'' 



ANDREW JACKSON 



CHAPTER XV. 

ANDREW JACKSON. 

Andrew Jackson, twice President of the 
United States, did not become a professed 
Christian until after he had retired from poHti- 
cal life and was past sixty years of age. He 
had promised his wife that immediately on 
retiring from politics he would make a public 
profession of Christianity; but he was rather 
slow in keeping the promise. In August, 1838, 
he wrote in answer to one who had written him 
on the subject : "I would long since have made 
this solemn public dedication to Almighty God, 
but knowing the wretchedness of this world, 
and how prone many are to evil, that the 
scoffer of religion would have cried out, 
'Hypocrisy! He has joined the church for 
political effect,' I thought it best to post- 
pone this public act until my retirement to the 



176 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

shades of private life, when no false imputa- 
tion could be made that might be injurious 
to religion." 

Tames Parton, his most careful biographer, 
received from Rev. Dr. Edgar, who was at 
the time pastor of an influential Presbyterian 
church in Nashville, Tenn., the story of Gen- 
eral Jackson's conversion. Dr. Edgar said 
that he was invited, during the year 1839, to 
the Hermitage to administer religious advice 
to the wife of the General's son, who was 
sick, and also troubled in mind. During the 
conversation she chanced to say, in General 
Jackson's hearing, that she felt herself to be 
"a great sinner." 

"You a sinner?" interposed the General. 
"Why, you are all purity and goodness! Join 
Dr. Edgar's church by all means." 

This remark was considered by the clergy- 
man a proof that at that time General Jack- 
son was blind as to the nature of true relig- 
ion. 

Not long afterwards a protracted meeting 
was being held in the little church on the 
Hermitage farm. General Jackson sat in his 
accustomed seat and Dr. Edgar preached. 



ANDREW JACKSON. 177 

The subject of the sermon was the interposi- 
tion of Providence in the affairs of men, a 
subject congenial with the habitual tone of 
General Jackson's mind. The preacher spoke 
in detail of the perils which beset the life of 
man, and how often he is preserved from 
sickness and sudden death. Seeing General 
Jackson listening with rapt attention to his 
discourse, the eloquent preacher sketched the 
career of a man who, in addition to the ordi- 
nary dangers of human life, had encountered 
those of the wilderness, of war, and of keen 
political conquest; who had escaped the toma- 
hawk of the savage, the attack of his country's 
enemies, the privations and fatigues of border 
warfare, and the aim of the assassin. ''How 
is it," exclaimed the preacher, ''that a man 
endowed with reason and gifted with intelli- 
gence can pass through such scenes as these 
unharmed and not see the hand of God in his 
deliverance?" While enlarging on his theme 
Dr. Edgar saw that his words were sinking 
deep into the General's heart. 

After the service General Jackson got into 
his carriage and was riding homewards. He 
was overtaken by Dr. Edgar on horseback. 



178 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

He hailed the doctor and said that he wished 
to speak with him. 

"Doctor," said the General, "I want you to 
come home with me to-night." 

''I cannot to-night," was the reply; "I am 
engaged elsewhere." 

''Doctor," repeated the General, ''I want 
you to come home with me to-night." 

Dr. Edgar said that he had promised to 
visit a sick lady, and he felt bound to keep 
his promise. General Jackson, as though he 
had not heard the reply, said a third time, 
and more pleadingly than before: ''Doctor, I 
want you to come home with me to-night." 

"General Jackson," said the clergyman, "my 
word is pledged; I cannot break it; but I will 
be at the Hermitage to-morrow morning very 
early." 

The anxious man, under the deepest con- 
viction of sin, was obliged to let it rest that 
way, and went home alone. He spent the 
entire night pacing his room, conversing with 
his daughter, and in prayer. It was a time 
of most radical and momentous revolution in 
the man's nature. His biographer says of that 
night: "What thoughts passed through his 



ANDREW JACKSON. 179 

mind as he paced his room in the silence of 
the night, of what sins he repented, and what 
actions of his Hfe he wished he had not done, 
no one knows, or ever will know. But the 
value of this upheaving of the soul depends 
upon that. There is a repentance which is 
radical, sublime, regenerating. There is a 
repentance which is shallow and fruitless. 
Conversion means a turning. It is only when 
we know from what a man turns, and to what 
he turns, that we can know whether his turn- 
ing is of any benefit to him. There is such a 
thing as man's emancipating himself, in one 
night of agony and joy, in one thrilling instant 
of time, from the domination of pride and 
desire. He who is walking along the plain 
cannot reach the mountain-top in a moment; 
but in a moment he can set his face toward 
it and begin to scale the heights." 

As the day dawned on that awful night of 
repentance and anguish, the light from Heaven 
broke upon Andrew Jackson's troubled soul, 
and a great peace soothed his spirit. 

Dr. Edgar arrived soon after sunrise that 
Sunday morning, and to him General Jackson, 
in the first flush of his new love for Christ 



i8o RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

and his new joy at the forgiveness of his 
sins, expressed a desire to unite with the 
church with his daughter that very morning. 
The minister conversed with him, putting 
the usual questions respecting doctrine and 
experience, and all were satisfactorily ans- 
wered. Then there w^as a pause in the con- 
versation, at the close of which Dr. Edgar 
said, very solemnly: "General, there is one 
more question which it is my duty to ask you. 
Can you forgive all your enemies?" 

The question was a surprise, and for a few 
moments Jackson was silent. 

"My political enemies," he at length re- 
sponded, *1 can freely forgive; but as for those 
who abused me when I was serving my coun- 
try in the field, and those who attacked me for 
serving my country — ^Doctor, that is a differ- 
ent case." 

The minister assured him that it was not dif- 
ferent; but that forgiveness of our enemies is 
at the very gateway to Christian life, that 
Christianity forbids the indulgence of any 
hatred whatever and absolutely requires the 
forgiveness of every one who has wronged us 
in any way. 



ANDREW JACKSON. i8i 

After an extended pause General Jackson 
said that he thought he could forgive all who 
had injured him, even those v^ho had assailed 
him for what he had done for his country in 
the field. Dr. Edgar then consented to his 
uniting with the church that morning, and left 
the room to carry the glad tidings to Mrs. 
Jackson. She hastened to the General's apart- 
ment. They rushed with tears into each other's 
arms and remained long in a fond and silent 
embrace. 

The Hermitage church was crowded that 
Sunday morning to the utmost of its small 
capacity. At the windows were the eager 
faces of the colored servants. After the usual 
services General Andrew Jackson rose in his 
place to make the required public declaration 
of his concurrence with the doctrines and his 
resolve to obey the precepts of the church. He 
leaned heavily upon his walking stick with both 
hands; tears rolled down his cheeks. His 
daughter, the fair young matron, stood beside 
him. The silence was most profound and the 
emotion of the people beyond description as the 
General answered the questions proposed to 
him. When at last the formal ceremony was 



i82 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ended and he was pronounced a member of the 
church and Dr. Edgar was about to continue 
the services, the long restrained feelings of the 
congregation burst forth in sobs and devout 
exclamations which compelled him to pause for 
several minutes. The clergyman himself was 
speechless with emotion and abandoned him- 
self to the exultation of the hour. A familiar 
hymn was announced, and all the people, both 
within the church and outside in the gathered 
groups about the windows, joined with an 
ecstatic fervor which at once expressed and re- 
lieved their feelings. 

No one who knew Andrew Jackson ever 
doubted the genuineness and sincerity of that 
conversion. The whole character and life of 
the man were transformed. From that Sun- 
day morning when he stood in the little Her- 
mitage church to take that new oath of alle- 
giance to Christ until the day of his death his 
Christian character was his chief characteristic. 
During the remainder of his life he spent most 
of his leisure hours in reading the Bible, in 
studying Bible commentaries, and in reading 
over and over the hymns in what he always 
pronounced in the old-fashioned way his 



ANDREW JACKSON. 183 

'^Hime-hook." The commentary known as 
"Scott's Bible" was a source of great delight to 
him ; he studiously read it through twice before 
he died. He held prayers every evening in the 
presence of his family and household servants. 

On the last Sunday but two of his life Gen- 
eral Jackson partook of the communion in the 
presence of his family. He spoke much of the 
consolation of religion and declared he was 
ready for the final summons. To one who 
called to see him just before his death he said, 
*T am in the hands of a merciful God. I have 
full confidence in his goodness and mercy. My 
lamp of life is nearly out and the last glimmer 
has come. I am ready to depart when called. 
The Bible is true. The principles and statutes 
of that Holy Book have been the rule of my 
life, and I have tried to conform to its spirit as 
nearly as possible. Upon that sacred volume 
I rest my hope for eternal salvation, through 
the merits and blood of our blessed Lord and 
Saviour, Jesus Christ." 

A friend of the family, Mr. William Tyack, 
who spent a few days at the Hermitage as 
Andrew Jackson neared his sunset, kept a 
diary in which he recorded Jackson's conversa- 



i84 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

tion and the events which occurred in the 
household. Among other things he wrote: 
"At nine o'clock, as is the custom, all the Gen- 
eral's family, except the few who take their 
turn to watch by his side, took their leave of 
him; each of the family approached him, re- 
ceived his blessing, bade him farewell; kissed 
him, as it would seem, an eternal good-night; 
for he would say, 'My work is done for life/ 
After his family retires it is touching to wit- 
ness this heroic man, who has faced every dan- 
ger with unyielding front, offer up his prayer 
for those whom Providence has committed to 
his care; that Heaven would protect and pros- 
per them when he is no more — praying still 
more fervently to God for the preservation of 
his country, of the Union, and the people of the 
United States from all foreign influence and 
invasion — tendering his forgiveness to his ene- 
mies, and his gratitude to God for his support 
and success through a long life, and for the 
hope of eternal salvation through the merits of 
our blessed Redeemer." 



ELISHA KENT KANE 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ELISHA KENT KANE. 

Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the famous Arc- 
tic explorer, was brought to a definite and com- 
forting Christian experience when but eighteen 
years of age through a severe illness which 
brought him face to face with death. For a 
long time his family despaired of his life, and 
he was himself persuaded that there was no 
hope of his ever making himself useful or hon- 
ored among men. His biographer, William 
Elder, says that this was a period of a new 
birth to him. ''Coasting the infinite so long 
and so near, it opened its scenery to the eyes of 
his spirit. He walked in its light thenceforth 
through his journey to the end. He was let 
into his own inmost life; he got hold of his 
destiny, and he ever after governed himself 
conformably. He was at one with himself 
now, and knew how to conciliate order and lib- 
erty, to obey and to command, to accept the 



i88 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

help of system and to preserve his individual- 
ism under it without conflict ; he stood ready to 
die, but he did not despair." 

Dr. Kane's journals, kept during his long 
absence in the frozen North, bear eloquent tes- 
timony of his faith. Here is one entry concern- 
ing Christmas. It reads thus : "Sunday, Dec. 
25. The birthday of Christ." 

Kane's biographer well says that his heroism 
would have been reckless if it had not been 
reverent ; he believed that whatever God wills, 
a man may do; he believed in special provi- 
dence. His life was full of this confidence. In 
the journal of his second Arctic voyage we find 
this : "It is twelve months to-day since I re- 
turned from the weary foot-tramp which de- 
termined me to try the winter search. Things 
have changed since then, and the prospect 
ahead is less cheery. But I close my pilgrim 
experience of the year with devout gratitude 
for the blessings it has registered and an ear- 
nest faith in the support it pledges for the times 
to come." 

Speaking of a time when things were at their 
worst, he says : "I look back at it with recol- 
lections like those of a nightmare. Yet I was 



ELISHA KENT KANE. 189 

borne up wonderfully. I never doubted for 
an instant that the same Providence which had 
guarded us through the long darkness of win- 
ter was still watching over us for good, and 
that it was yet in reserve for us — for some; I 
dared not hope for all — to bear back the tidings 
of our rescue to a Christian land. But how, I 
did not see." 

Dr. Kane had great faith in prayer, and Wil- 
son, one of the rescue party, gives this account : 
*7ust before we started [on the return with the 
rescued men], while the rest of the party sur- 
rounded the sledge with uncovered heads. Dr. 
Kane rendered thanks to the Great Ruler of 
human destinies for the goodness he had 
evinced in preserving our feeble lives while 
struggling over the ice-desert, exposed to a 
blast almost as withering as that from a fur- 
nace. The scene was extremely solemn as, 
deeply impressed by the situation, our com- 
mander poured forth ready and eloquent sen- 
tences of gratitude in that lonely solitude, 
whose scenery offered everything to depress 
the mind and nothing to cheer it. Not a word 
fell from his lips that did not find a ready re- 
sponse in our own hearts when we reflected 



190 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

upon the dangers we had undergone and the 
certainty of death which would have followed 
the continuance of exposure for even a few 
hours." 

On another occasion, Dr. Kane writes: "I 
never lost my hope; I looked to the coming 
spring as full of responsibilities; but I had 
bodily strength and moral tone enough to look 
through them to the end. A trust based on 
experience as well as on promises buoyed me 
up at the worst times. Call it fatalism, as you 
ignorantly may, there is that in the story of 
every eventful life which teaches the ineffi- 
ciency of human means and the present control 
of the Supreme Agency. See how often re- 
lief has come at the moment of extremity, in 
forms strangely unsought — almost, at the time, 
unwelcome; see, still more^ how the back has 
been strengthened to its increasing burdens and 
the heart cheered by some conscious influence 
of an Unseen Power." 

The Christian heroism of Dr. Kane that 
served him for his own great trials made itself 
felt in every man in his party and kept them 
from despair. One of them afterwards, when 
questioned in regard to it, said : "Well, it kept 



ELISHA KENT KANE. 191 

us human when we were nearly desperate. 
While we stood with uncovered heads in an at- 
mosphere far below zero, his prayers brought 
up the spirit of society and civilization in us; 
and although we perhaps had very little relig- 
ion in us, we always had some about us." 

In a farewell letter to his father on one occa- 
sion, as he was about to leave for the Arctic, 
he wrote : "Say to mother to have no fears on 
Arctic account. I am not entirely well, but as 
well as I would be at home, and so trusting in 
the Great Disposer of good and ill that I am 
willing to meet like a man the worst that can 
happen to one secure of right and approving 
heart and soul of that in which he is engaged." 
After the good-bye signature there is this sen- 
tence : "Love, my last word is Love." 

The long and lonely experiences of the Arc- 
tic made Dr. Kane deeply introspective and 
furnished great opportunity for communion 
with his own soul and his God. Sitting one 
day at his father's table, after his return from 
his last expedition, some one closed the nar- 
rative of a dangerous adventure with the 
words, "I never encountered anything so awful 
in my life." The doctor had been for an hour 



192 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

silently attentive to all that was said. At this 
point one of the guests turned to him and 
asked, ''Dr. Kane, what is the most awful thing 
that you ever experienced?" His face 
took a devotionally serious expression; and 
he answered, 'The silence of the Arctic 
night!" 

On another occasion he gives us a glimpse 
into some of these experiences in the lonely 
North : "I am afraid to speak of some of these 
night-scenes. I have trodden the deck and the 
floes when the life of earth seemed suspended 
— its movements, its sounds, its coloring, its 
companionships; and as I looked on the radi- 
ant hemisphere circling above me as if render- 
ing worship to the unseen Centre of light I 
have ejaculated in humility of spirit, 'Lord, 
what is man, that thou art mindful of him?' 
And then I have thought of the kindly world 
we had left, with its revolving sunshine and 
shadow, and the other stars that gladden it in 
their changes, and the hearts that warm to us 
there, till I lost myself in memories of those 
who were not; and they bore me back to the 
stars again." 

Dr. Kane had broad sympathies and a gen- 



ELISHA KENT KANE. 193 

erous, compassionate heart which gave him an 
interest, gentle and tender, towards animals as 
well as human beings. Horses and dogs were 
something more than pets and indulgences 
with him; his attachment to them was a 
strongly marked feature of his character. He 
called each by some pet name always, with a 
feeling which kindly, almost respectfully, ac- 
corded to them their poor claims to a distinct 
individuality, if not personality, with its rights 
and the resulting relations with their masters 
and among themselves. 

On one occasion an elephant on exhibition 
at the Philadelphia Circus killed his keeper and 
went on a rampage in the menagerie, making a 
general jail-delivery among the tiger and lion 
cages, with such zeal that he broke one of his 
tusks. The alarm roused the police, and the 
mayor ordered out a company of militia to kill 
the enraged animal. Dr. Kane heard the 
rumor, and exclaimed, "The cowardly tyrants, 
to call the elephant mad ! An animal with the 
intelligence of an elephant has a right to be 
indignant : that's the word for it. He has been 
outraged by a brute with less than his own in- 
tellect and nothing of his sense of right; and 



194 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

now he must be murdered to check his just 
revenge." 

Dr. Kane, however, was no pessimist in re- 
gard to human nature. He saw something 
good in every one. To a friend who was pat- 
ting a dog., after he had been abusing some of 
the lowest and most loathsome of our own 
species and exploiting the depraved side of 
human nature generally, he said, "I like your 
kindliness to the poor dog-people; I have that 
feeling more than moderately strong myself. 
But I never saw a man who was not higher 
than a dog." That was after he had seen 
humanity in its dregs in every quarter of the 
globe. 

When Dr. Kane returned from his last Arc- 
tic voyage he requested his pastor. Rev. C. W. 
Shields, of the Second Presbyterian Church of 
Philadelphia, to which his parents belonged 
and where he had been baptized as a child, to 
make public thanksgiving for the deliverance 
of his party from the perils of their cruise. He 
greatly enjoyed the service and warmly 
thanked the pastor for performing it. Before 
he set out he had requested public prayer to be 
made in one of the churches in New York for 



ELISHA KENT KANE. 195 

the well-being of the crew and the prosperity 
of the enterprise. 

Death came to the heroic explorer in 
Havana, Cuba. His mother and his brothers 
were with him. At the last he had them read 
to him the Beatitudes, and then asked to have 
repeated to him David's sweetest Psalm : "The 
Lord is my shepherd : I shall not want." The 
Good Shepherd had led the traveler on many a 
dangerous and daring trail, but now he was 
leading him by the "still waters." Then he 
asked for the reading of those precious words 
with which the Saviour took leave of his weep- 
ing disciples : "Let not your heart be troubled : 
ye believe in God; believe also in me. In my 
Father's house are many mansions; if it were 
not so, I would have told you. I go to pre- 
pare a place for you." Even while they were 
reading these words he took his departure and 
was with the Lord. 

Surely Dr. Elisha Kent Kane deserves to 
live in history as a great Christian hero. His 
Arctic explorations stand on a different basis 
from many others. His search for the party of 
Sir John Franklin, whom he believed to be 
still living, dignified it to a great work of 



196 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

humanity. His pastor in his funeral discourse 
declares that the philanthropic spirit was the 
crowning charm of his character and a con- 
trolling motive in his perilous enterprise. 
''Other promptings indeed were there, neither 
suppressed, nor in themselves to be depreciated. 
That passion for adventure^ that love of 
science, that generous ambition which stimu- 
lated his youthful exploits appear now under 
the check and guidance of a still nobler im- 
pulse. It is his sympathy with the lost and 
suffering and the duteous conviction that it 
may lie in his power to liberate them from their 
icy dungeon which thrill his heart and nerve 
him to his hard task. In his avowed aim the 
interests of geography were to be subordinate 
to the claims of humanity. And neither the 
entreaties of affection nor the imperiling of a 
fame which to a less modest spirit would have 
seemed too precious to hazard could swerve 
him from the generous purpose." 



ABIGAIL ADAMS 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ABIGAIL ADAMS. 

Abigail Adams stands alone in American 
history as the one woman who had the unique 
honor of being the wife of one and the mother 
of another President of the United States. 
She was a very remarkable woman from any 
standpoint, and one cannot read her letters or 
the story of her life without discovering that 
her profound religious convictions were the 
source of much of her greatness. The deep- 
est sorrow of her life was the long separation 
which she was compelled to endure because of 
her husband's duty to the public; but it is 
through this separation that we have many 
glimpses into the lives of these two truly great 
Americans. When the Revolutionary War 
broke out in Boston, she closed a letter giving 
a graphic description of occurrences there by 
saying, "Hitherto I have been able to main- 
tain a calmness and presence of mind ; and hope 



200 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

I shall, let the exigency of the time be what it 
will." 

John Adams's presence and services were so 
invaluable in Congress that he could not be 
spared, and consequently Mrs. Adams was 
called upon to exercise all her fortitude and 
bear up in great measure alone under the ter- 
rible trials of war, pestilence, and such like 
evils; yet she did not murmur, and she sym- 
pathized fully in the glowing words of her hus- 
band, who had been the great and eloquent de- 
fender of the Declaration of Independence in 
July, 1776. ''You will think me transported 
with enthusiasm," he writes, "but I am not. I 
am well aware of the toil and blood and treas- 
ure that it will cost us to maintain this Declara- 
tion and support and defend these States; yet 
through all the gloom I can see the rays of rav- 
ishing light and glory. I can see the end is 
more than worth all th- means and that pos- 
terity will triumph in that day's transaction, 
even although we shall rue it, which I trust in 
God we shall not." 

After the Battle of Bunker Hill Abigail 
Adams wrote to her husband^ *' 'The race is 
not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; 



ABIGAIL ADAMS. 201 

but the God of Israel is he that giveth strength 
and power unto his people. Trust in him at all 
times; ye people, pour out your hearts before 
him. God is a refuge for us.' Charlestown is 
laid in ashes." 

In the midst of these troublous times per- 
sonal sorrows and bereavements were often 
calling men and women away from public 
affairs. What a window we have into the 
tender heart and confident faith of this great- 
souled woman in this letter to her husband tell- 
ing of the death of her mother : ** 'Have pity 
upon me, have pity upon me, O thou my be- 
loved, for the hand of God presseth me sore.' 
*Yet will I be dumb and silent, and not open 
my mouth, because thou, O Lord, hast done it.' 
How can I tell you (oh, my bursting heart!) 
that my dear mother has left me — this day, 
about five o'clock, she left this world for an in- 
finitely better. After sustaining sixteen days' 
severe conflict, nature fainted, and she fell 
asleep. Blessed spirit ! Where art thou ? At 
times I am almost ready to faint under this 
severe and heavy stroke, separated from thee, 
who used to be a comforter to me in affliction ; 
but, blessed be God, his ear is not heavy that 



202 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

he cannot hear, but he has bid us call upon him 
in time of trouble." 

During the long absence of John Adams in 
Europe Abigail Adams not only bore her own 
trials and carried on the family life success- 
fully, but she buoyed and encouraged her hus- 
band by letters such as few men have ever re- 
ceived from their wives. On one occasion she 
writes when she was uncertain as to his loca- 
tion, for there was often a long time between 
letters in those old slow days: "Hitherto my 
wandering ideas have roved, like the son of 
Ulysses, from sea to sea and from shore to 
shore, not knowing where to find you; some- 
times I fancied you upon the mighty waters, 
sometimes at your desired haven, sometimes 
upon the ungrateful and hostile shore of Brit- 
ain, but at all times and in all places under the 
protecting care and guardianship of that 
Being who not only clothes the lilies of the 
field and hears the young ravens when they cry, 
but hath said., ^Of how much more worth are 
ye than many sparrows;' and this confidence, 
which the world cannot deprive me of, is my 
food by day and my rest by night and was all 
my consolation under the horrid ideas of as- 



ABIGAIL ADAMS. 203 

sassination — the only event of which I had not 
thought and, in some measure, prepared my 
mind." 

Abigail Adams was as great a mother as she 
was a wife^ and some of her letters to her son, 
John Quincy Adams, when at an early age he 
was absent with his father in Europe pursuing 
his education, bear eloquent testimony to the 
depth of her Christian character. In one of 
these letters she says to her boy, who had writ- 
ten her of a narrow escape from shipwreck: 
**You have seen how inadequate the aid of 
man would have been if the winds and the seas 
had not been under the particular government 
of that Being who 'stretched out the heavens 
as a span,' who 'holdeth the ocean in the hollow 
of his hand,' and 'rideth upon the wings of the 
wind.' 

"If you have a due sense of your preserva- 
tion your next consideration will be for what 
purpose you are continuing in life. It is not 
to rove from clime to clime to gratify an idle 
curiosity ; but every new mercy you receive is a 
new debt upon you, a new obligation to a dili- 
gent discharge of the various relations in 
which you stand connected; in the first place, 



204 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

to your great Preserver ; in the next, to society 
in general; in particular, to your country, to 
your parents, and to yourself. 

'The only sure and permanent foundation of 
virtue is religion. Let this important truth be 
engraven upon your heart. And also, that the 
foundation of religion is the belief of the one 
only God, and a just sense of his attributes, as 
a Being infinite, wise, just, and good, to whom 
you owe the highest reverence, gratitude, and 
adoration." 

In the spring of 1785 Mrs. Adams accom- 
panied her husband to England, he having been 
appointed the first American Minister at the 
Court of St. James. It was a position of great 
difficulty, not only for Mr. Adams but for his 
wife as well. But Abigail Adams was equal 
to the occasion and bore herself with the most 
admirable skill and spirit in her trying posi- 
tion. A true and genuine Christian lady, with- 
out pretension or affectation, claiming nothing 
for herself beyond what is due to every lady, 
but expecting and requiring from the haughti- 
est the consideration appropriate to her rank as 
representing the women of her native country, 
she seems to have charmed the nobility and 



ABIGAIL ADAMS. 205 

votaries of fashionable life by her unaffected 
simplicity, gentleness, refinement, and courtesy, 
and fully to have sustained the character which 
her countrywomen may well have admired. 
Though subjected to many annoyances, Mrs. 
Adams always proved herself equal to every 
emergency and never tarnished the fair name 
of the people to whom she belonged. 

Fame and power never for a moment dazzled 
the eyes of this sincere Christian woman. In 
1 797, John Adams having been elected the suc- 
cessor of Washington as the President of the 
United States, his wife wrote to him in terms 
not only of great womanly dignity, but in sen- 
tences which revealed the sincere, spiritual 
quality of her nature. She begins her letter 
with a little couplet : 

"The sun is dressed in brightest beams, 
To give honor to the day, 

and may it prove an auspicious prelude to 
each ensuing season. You have this day to de- 
clare yourself head of the nation. 'And now, 
O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant 
ruler over the people. Give unto him an 
understanding heart, that he may know how 



2o6 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

i to go out and come in before this great 
\ people; that he may discern between good 
^ and bad. For who is able to judge this, 
thy so great a people?' were the words of 
a royal sovereign; and not less applicable to 
him who is invested with the Chief Magistracy 
of a nation, though he wears not the crown nor 
the robes of royalty. 

*'My thoughts and my meditations are with 
you, though personally absent; and my peti- 
tions to Heaven are that 'the things which 
make for peace may not be hidden from your 
eyes.' My feelings are not those of pride or 
ostentation upon the occasion. They are 
solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the 
important trust and numerous duties connected 
with it. That you may be enabled to discharge 
them with honor to yourself, with justice and 
impartiality to your country, and with satisfac- 
tion to this great people, shall be the daily 
prayer of your A. A." 

When Thomas Jefferson lost his daughter 
by death, Mrs. Adams wrote him: *T have 
tasted of the bitter cup and bow with reverence 
and submission before the Great Dispenser of 
it, without whose permission and overruling 



ABIGAIL ADAMS. 207 

providence not a sparrow falls to the ground. 
That you may derive comfort and consolation 
in this day of your sorrow and affliction from 
that only source calculated to heal the wounded 
heart, a firm belief in the being, perfections 
and attributes of God, is the sincere and ardent 
wish of her who once took pleasure in subscrib- 
ing herself your friend." 

Abigail Adams made herself supremely es- 
sential to the two great men forever connected 
with her name, her husband and her eldest son. 
John Adams found in her death, though he 
was then eighty-three years of age, the severest 
affliction which had ever befallen him. She 
had gone through the vicissitudes of more than 
half a century in his company, had sympa- 
thized with him in all his aspirations, and had 
cheered him in his greatest trials. Her char- 
acter had adapted itself to his in such a man- 
ner as to improve the good qualities of both. 

Her eldest son, John Quincy Adams, re- 
turned home after eight years' diplomatic ser- 
vice abroad and became Secretary of State 
under President Monroe. It was, no doubt, a 
great gratification to his mother to have a son 
whose uprightness of character and abilities as 



2o8 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

a statesman were fully and freely recognized; 
and had her life been spared but a few years 
longer she would have seen the son, as she had 
seen the father, elevated to the Presidency of 
the United States. Though John Quincy 
Adams was at the time of his mother's death a 
famous man in mature years, her loss came to 
him as a great shock, and he wrote of it that 
he scarcely knew how to live in the world with 
his mother absent from it. She had with rare 
and beautiful fidelity impressed him not only 
with her mother love but with her firm relig- 
ious convictions and the spiritual quality of her 
great soul. 



WILLIAM C. BRYANT 




WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

William Cullen Bryant was brought up 
in a Christian home and from his earhest baby- 
hood breathed the atmosphere of Christian 
faith. He says of his childhood : "I naturally 
acquired habits of devotion. My mother and 
grandmother had taught me, as soon as I could 
speak, the Lord's Prayer and other petitions 
suited to childhood, and I may be said to have 
been nurtured on Watts' devout poems com- 
posed for children. The prayer of the Publi- 
can in the New Testament was often in my 
mouth, and I heard every variety of prayer at 
the Sunday evening services conducted by lay- 
men in private houses. But I varied in my 
private devotions from these models in one re- 
spect — namely, in supplicating, as I often did, 
that I might receive the gift of poetic genius 
and write verses that might endure. I pre- 
sented this petition in those early years with 



212 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

great lervor; but after a time I discontinued 
the practice, I can hardly say why. As a gen- 
eral rule, whatever I might innocently wish I 
did not see why I should not have, and I was 
a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer." 

Bryant made a rhymed version of the first 
chapter of the Book of Job when he was only 
ten years of age. It began as follows : 

Job, just and good, in Uz had sojourned long; 
He feared his God, and shunned the way of wrong. 
Three were his daughters, and his sons were seven, 
And large the wealth bestowed on him by heaven. 
Seven thousand sheep were in his pastures fed, 
Three thousand camels by his train were led; 
For him the yoke a thousand oxen wore, 
Five hundred she-asses his burdens bore. 
His household to a mighty host increased, 
Greatest man was Job in all the East. 

The great poem of his early youth was 
"Thanatopsis," written when he was but 
seventeen years of age, and revealing the no- 
bility of his thought and the religious spirit 
which mastered and controlled his poetical 
gift. 

It was not, however, until William Cullen 
Bryant was sixty-four years of age that he 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 213 

was moved to make a public confession of his 
faith in Christ in a formal way. He was liv- 
ing with his family in Naples in 1858. Mrs. 
Bryant had been suddenly prostrated by se- 
rious illness, and he had watched over her 
through many anxious weeks. A Mr. Water- 
ston, a minister from Boston who happened to 
be just then in Naples and who was also an 
acquaintance of Mr. Bryant, received from him, 
on April 23d of that year, a note stating that 
there was a subject of interest upon which he 
would like to converse with the minister. Mr. 
Waterston recounts the story as follows : 

*'0n the following day, the weather being 
delightful, we walked in the Villa Reale, the 
royal park or garden overlooking the Bay of 
Naples. Never can I forget the beautiful 
spirit that breathed through every word he ut- 
tered, the reverent love, the confiding trust, the 
aspiring hope, the rooted faith. Every 
thought, every view, was generous and com- 
prehensive. Anxiously watching, as he had 
been doing, in that twilight boundary between 
this world and another, over one more precious 
to him than life itself, the divine truths and 
promises had come home to his mind with new 



214 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

power. He said that he had never united him- 
self with the church, which, with his present 
feehngs, he would most gladly do. He then 
asked if it would be agreeable to me to come 
to his room on the morrow and administer 
the communion, adding that, as he had not 
been baptized, he desired that ordinance at the 
same time. The day following was the Sab- 
bath and a most heavenly day. In the fulfill- 
ment of his wishes, in his own quiet room, a 
company of seven persons celebrated together 
the Lord's Supper. With hymns, selections 
from the Scriptures, and devotional exercises 
we went back in thought to the 'large upper 
room' where Christ first instituted the Holy 
Supper in the midst of his disciples. Previous 
to the breaking of bread William Cullen 
Bryant was baptized. With snow-white head 
and flowing beard he stood like one of the an- 
cient prophets, and perhaps never since the 
days of the apostles has a truer disciple pro- 
fessed allegiance to the Divine Master. 

"After the service, while standing at the 
window looking out over the bay, smooth as 
glass (the same water over which the Apostle 
Paul sailed, in the ship from Alexandria, when 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 215 

he brought Christianity into Italy), the grace- 
ful outline of the Island of Capri relieved 
against the sky, with that glorious scene repos- 
ing before us Mr. Bryant repeated the lines of 
John Heyden, the Oriental scholar and poet — 
lines which he said had always been special 
favorites of his and of which he was often re- 
minded by that holy tranquillity which seems 
as with conscious recognition to characterize 
the Lord's Day : 

With silent awe I hail the sacred morn, 
That scarcely wakes while all the fields are still ; 

A soothing calm on every breeze is borne, 
A graver murmur echoes from the hill, 

And softer sings the linnet from the thorn. 

Hail, light serene ! hail, sacred Sabbath morn ! 

Mr. Bryant's daughter, writing to his 
biographer of his personal religious habits, 
says that on Sunday mornings he always read 
prayers and a chapter from the Bible, and that 
she supposed it was only on Sundays, because 
in earlier years her father was obliged to leave 
home on week days before the family could be 
assembled for prayers. She also states that 
often in the evenings, after her father had left 
the parlor, she would go up to his library, and 



2i6 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

almost always find him reading the Book of 
Prayers or some other religious book. He 
never spoke of it, but she knew it was his in- 
variable custom to read in his room some pages 
of books of this kind before retiring. On Sun- 
day evenings, 'if anything prevented his going 
to church, and generally in the country, where 
there was no evening service, he read a ser- 
mon aloud, choosing from a wide range, often 
one written by Souths or Beecher, or Phillips 
Brooks, or Robertson. Miss Bryant says: 
**Very few people knew how much of my 
father's time was occupied with religious mat- 
ters, especially during the last years of his life, 
and after my mother's death he read more 
books of that character than of any other." 

At Roslyn, his country home, Mr. Bryant 
was a trustee of the Presbyterian Church, of 
which Dr. Ely was pastor. In New York City 
he attended the successive pastorates of Drs. 
Dewey, Osgood, and Bellows. Mr. John Bige- 
low, his biographer in the "American Men of 
Letters" series, declares that *'No one ever rec- 
ognized more completely or more devoutly the 
divinity of Christ." Not long before his 
death his friend, Dr. Alden, published a little 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 217 

volume entitled "Thoughts on the Religious 
Life," and one of the last things Bryant ever 
wrote was a preface to this book, in which he 
said: 

"This character, of which Christ was the 
perfect model, is in itself so attractive, so 'alto- 
gether lovely,' that I cannot describe in lan- 
guage the admiration with which I regard it; 
nor can I express the gratitude I feel for the 
dispensation which bestowed that example on 
mankind, for the truths which he taught and 
the sufferings he endured for our sakes. I 
tremble to think what the world would be with- 
out him. Take away the blessing of the advent 
of his life and the blessings purchased by his 
death, in what an abyss of guilt would man 
have been left? It would seem to have been 
blotting out the sun from the heavens — to 
leave our system of worlds in chaos, frost, and 
darkness. 

"In my view of the life, the teachings, the 
labors, and the sufferings of the blessed Jesus 
there can be no admiration too profound, no 
love of which the human heart is capable too 
warm, no gratitude too earnest and deep, of 
which he is justly the object. It is with sor- 



2i8 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

row that my love for him is so cold and my 
gratitude so inadequate. 

"The religious man finds in his relations to 
his Maker a support to his virtue which others 
cannot have. He acts always with a conscious- 
ness that he is immediately under the eye of a 
Being who looks into his heart and sees his in- 
most thoughts and discerns the motives which 
he is half unwilling to acknowledge even to 
himself. He feels that he is under the inspec- 
tion of a Being who is only pleased with right 
motives and purity of intention and who is dis- 
pleased with whatever is otherwise. He feels 
that the approbation of that Being is infinitely 
more to be valued than the applause of all man- 
kind and his displeasure more to be feared and 
more to be avoided than any disgrace which he 
might sustain from his brethren of mankind." 

Miss Bryant, writing to her father's biogra- 
pher, says of this preface to Dr. Alden's book: 
"The Preface must have been one of the last 
things written by my father. It speaks more 
fully than I have known him to do elsewhere 
of his religious belief and of his belief in 
Christ, and is very touching, I think. I re- 
member how earnestly he used to enjoin upon 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 219 

me to study the character and example of 
Christ and to try to follow it. He was so re- 
served even with his children in speaking of 
such subjects that he rarely admonished any 
one in this way; but when he did it was done 
with a simplicity and earnestness that made it 
something never to be forgotten." 

The poetry of William Cullen Bryant is 
largely pervaded by the spiritual quality of the 
man's mind and heart. One of his poems, 
especially, reveals his spiritual insight as well 
as his faith in immortality. It is entitled 'The 
Future Life" and inspired by a longing to see 
again the wife whom he loved so tenderly. 

How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
The disembodied spirits of the dead, 

When all of thee that time could wither sleeps 
And perishes among the dust we tread? 

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not; 

Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thy own meek heart demand me there? 

That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given? 
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 

And wilt thou never utter it in heaven? 



220 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind, 
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere, 

And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? 

The love that lived through all the stormy past, 
And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 

And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, 
Shall it expire with life, and be no more? 

A happier lot than mine, and larger light, 

Await thee there ; for thou hast bowed thy will 

In cheerful homage to the rule of right, 
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill. 

For me, the sordid cares in which I dwell 

Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll; 

And wrath has left its scar — that fire of hell 
Has left its frightful scar upon my soul. 

Yet though thou wear'st the glory of the sky. 
Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name. 

The same fair thoughtful brow, and gentle eye, 
Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same? 

Shalt thou not teach me, in that calmer home, 
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this — 

The wisdom which is love — till I become 
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss? 



FRANCES E. WILLARD 




CHAPTER XIX. 

FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD. 

In the Capitol at Washington Frances EHza- 
beth Willard stands in the great circle of honor 
to represent the prairie State of Illinois. In 
the great circle of reformers gathering through 
all the ages her place is forever secure. The 
early home life of Frances Willard was pre- 
eminently Christian. Many years afterward 
she wrote : 

'*Oh, sacred Sabbaths of our childhood! 
Oh, early mornings in the spring, when we ran 
together through the dewy grass or laid our 
ears to the brown bosom of the earth to hear 
her vibrant breathing, the thrill at her puls- 
ing heart! Oh, birds that sang for me, and 
flowers that bloomed, and mother-love that 
brooded and father-love that held ! And God's 
sky over all, and himself near unto us every- 



224 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

where; yea, nearer than near! Surely- 
heavenly and without end are the blessings of 
the Lord to his children ! Verily, his goodness 
and his mercy are with us all our days." 

Miss Willard's great career as a reformer 
had its root and growth in the religious charac- 
ter of the family and in the religious develop- 
ment of her own character and life. The chil- 
dren in the Willard family early signed the 
total abstinence pledge inscribed in the old 
family Bible, where the names of the father 
and the mother preceded the childish auto- 
graphs. This was the pledge : 

A pledge we make, no wine to take, 
No brandy red that turns the head, 
Nor fiery rum that ruins home, 
Nor whiskey hot that makes the sot, 
Nor brewers' beer, for that we fear, 
And cider, too, will never do; 
To quench our thirst we always bring 
Cold water from the well or spring. 
So here we pledge perpetual hate 
To all that can intoxicate. 

Fifty years after Frances Willard had 
signed this pledge, she composed another 



FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD. 225 

pledge, especially for her friends among the 
boys: 

I pledge my brain God's thoughts to think, 

My lips no fire or foam to drink 

From alcoholic cup, 

Nor link with my pure breath tobacco's taint. 

For have I not a right to be 

As wholesome, pure, and free as she 

Who through the years so glad and free 

Moves gently onward to meet me? 

A knight of the new chivalry 

For Christ and Temperance I would be — 

In Nineteen Hundred; come and see. 

Frances Willard's father had very conserva- 
tive ideas about the kind of books proper for 
young people — and, indeed, for older people — 
to read. He had the severest prejudice against 
fiction of any kind and did not allow his chil- 
dren to read even the best class of such books. 
Frances obeyed him implicitly during her 
childhood and until she had reached her legal 
majority. An incident which occurred on her 
eighteenth birthday shows, however, that the 
goodness of Frances Willard was by no means 
goody-goody. She believed that every human 
soul had a right to itself under God. On her 



226 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

eighteenth birthday she wrote a poem in which 
we find these lines : 

The clock has struck! 

Oh! heaven and earth, I am free! 

And here, beneath the watching stars, I feel 

New inspiration breathing from afar 

And resting on my spirit as it ne'er 

Could rest before, comes joy profound. 

And now I feel that I'm alone and free 

To worship and obey Jehovah only. 

Toward evening of this day, which she called 
"Freedom day," Frances took her seat quietly 
in her mother's rocking chair and began to 
read Scott's "Ivanhoe." Her father came in, 
and, noticing with great astonishment the book 
she held, grew cloudy of brow. 

"I thought I told you not to read novels, 
Frances," he remarked, seriously. 

*'So you did, father, and in the main I've 
kept faith with you in this; but you forget 
what day it is." 

"What day, indeed ! I should like to know 
if the day has anything to do with the deed !" 

"Indeed it has — I am eighteen — I am of age 
— I am now to do what / think right, and to 



FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD. 227 

read this fine historical story is, in my opinion, 
a right thing for me to do." 

Her father could hardly believe his ears. 
He was completely taken aback. At first he was 
inclined to take the book away ; but that would 
do harm, he thought, instead of good; so he 
wisely concluded to see this novel action from 
the funny side, and laughed heartily over the 
situation, her older brother, Ohver, doing the 
same, and both saying in one breath, ''A chip 
of the old block." 

Although she was brought up in such an at- 
mosphere of religion and prayer, it was not 
until the leisure of convalescence from a se- 
rious illness that prevented her presence at the 
graduating exercises of her class in North- 
western University that Frances Willard posi- 
tively entered upon the religious life. This is 
her own record of that important and signifi- 
cant occurrence : 

''It was one night in June, 1859. I was 
nineteen years old and was lying on my bed 
in my home at Evanston, 111., ill with typhoid 
fever. The doctor had said that the crisis 
would soon arrive, and I had overheard his 
words. Mother was watching in the next 



228 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

room. My whole soul was intent as two voices 
seemed to speak within me, one of them say- 
ing, *My child, give me thy heart. I called thee 
long by joy, I call thee now by chastisement; 
but I have called thee always and only because 
I love thee with an everlasting love.' The 
other said, 'Surely, you who are so resolute and 
strong will not break down now because of 
physical feebleness. You are a reasoner and 
never yet were you convinced of the reasonable- 
ness of Christianity. Hold out now, and you 
will feel when you get well just as you used to 
feel.' 

"One presence was to me warm, sunny, safe, 
with an impression as of snow-white wings; 
the other cold, dismal, dark, with the flutter of 
a bat. The controversy did not seem brief ; in 
my weakness such a strain would doubtless ap- 
pear longer than it was. But at last, solemnly, 
and with my whole heart, I said, not in 
spoken words, but in the deeper language of 
consciousness, *If God lets me get well, I'll try 
to be a Christian girl;' but this resolution did 
not bring peace ; * You must at once declare this 
resolution,' said the inward voice. 

''Strange as it seems and complete as has 



FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD. 229 

always been my frankness toward my dear 
mother, far beyond what is usual even between 
mother and child, it cost me a greater humbling 
of my pride to tell her than the resolution had 
cost of self-surrender or than any other utter- 
ance of my whole life has involved. After a 
hard battle, in which I lifted up my soul to God 
for strength, I faintly called her from the next 
room, and said : 'Mother, I wish to tell you that 
if God lets me get well, I'll try to be a Chris- 
tian girl.' 

''She took my hand, knelt beside my bed, 
and softly wept and prayed. I then turned my 
face to the wall and sweetly slept. 

"That winter we had revival services in the 
old Methodist church at Evanston. Doctor 
(now Bishop) Foster was president of the 
University, and his sermons, with those of 
Doctors Dempster and Bannister and others, 
deeply stirred my heart. I had convalesced 
slowly and spent several weeks at Forest 
Home, so that these meetings seemed to be my 
first opportunity of declaring my new alle- 
giance. The very earliest invitation to go for- 
ward, kneel at the altar, and be prayed for was 
heeded by me. Waiting for no one, counseling 



230 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

with no one, I went alone along the aisle with 
my heart beating so loud that I thought I could 
see as well as hear it beat as I moved forward. 
One of the most timid, shrinking, and sensitive 
of natures, what it meant to me to go forward 
thus, with my student friends gazing upon me, 
can never be told. I had been known as 'skep- 
tical,' and prayers (of which I then spoke 
lightly) had been asked for me in the church 
the year before. For fourteen nights in succes- 
sion I thus knelt at the altar, expecting some 
utter transformation — some portion of heaven 
to be placed in my inmost heart, as I have seen 
the box of valuables placed in the corner-stone 
of a building and firmly set, plastered over, and 
fixed in its place forever. This is what I had 
determined must be done, and was loath to give 
it up. I prayed and agonized; but what I 
sought did not occur. 

"One night when I returned to my room 
bafiled, weary, and discouraged and knelt be- 
side my bed, it came to me quietly that this was 
not the way ; that my 'conversion,' my 'turning 
about,' my 'religious experience' (re-ligare, to 
bind again), had reached its crisis on that sum- 
mer night when I said, 'Yes' to God. A quiet 



FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD. 231 

certitude of this pervaded my consciousness, 
and the next night I told the public congrega- 
tion so, gave my name to the church as a pro- 
bationer, and after holding this relation for a 
year, waiting for my sister Mary who joined 
later to fill out her six months' probation, I was 
baptized and joined the church, May 5, 1861, 
'in full connection.' Meanwhile I had regu- 
larly led, since that memorable June, a prayer- 
ful life (which I had not done for some months 
previous to that time), studied my Bible, and 
as I believe evinced by my daily life that I was 
taking counsel of the heavenly powers. 
Prayer-meeting, class-meeting, and church 
services were most pleasant to me, and I be- 
came an active worker, seeking to lead others 
to Christ. I had learned to think of and be- 
lieve in God in terms of Jesus Christ. . . . 
What Paul says of Christ is what I say; the 
love John felt, it is my dearest wish to cherish." 
How that Christian life, thus begun, grew in 
fulness and power the whole world that heard 
her and felt her influence can testify. Many 
years after that conversion she was able to 
v/rite : "The life of God flowing into the soul 
of man is the only life, and all my being sets 



232 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

toward him, as the rivers to the sea. Celestial 
things grow dearer to me every day, and I 
grow poorer in my own eyes save as God gives 
to me. I still care a little too much for the 
good words of the good, but God helps me even 
in that." 

The end of the career of Frances Willard, so 
far as her earthly life was concerned, was as 
truly religious as in the great days of her 
power, when she laid every wreath and crown 
bestowed upon her at the feet of her Lord. As 
she lay upon her last bed of sickness, after a 
hard day, she suddenly gazed intently on a pic- 
ture of the Christ directly opposite her bed. 
Her eyes seemed to meet those of the compas- 
sionate Saviour, and with the old eloquence in 
her voice, in the stillness she said : 

I am Merlin, and I am dying, 
But I'll follow the Gleam. 

And a little later she said to the friends who 
gathered about her, "Oh, let me go away, let 
me be in peace; I am so safe with him. He 
has other worlds, and I want to go." And so, 
still following the Christ Gleam with a brave 



FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD. 233 

heart and a courageous step, the dauntless soul 
went on to follow her Lord to all worlds 
whithersoever he might lead her. 



BENJAMIN HARRISON 



CHAPTER XX. 

BENJAMIN HARRISON. 

Benjamin Harrison — heir of a distin- 
guished Hne in American history, stretching 
from that other Benjamin Harrison who 
signed the Declaration of Independence with a 
genial wit and a cheerful daring that has never 
been forgotten, on through another President 
Harrison, who was first a famous general — 
was as well known as a Christian as he was as a 
statesman. For a great many years Mr. Har- 
rison was a devout member and a ruling elder 
in the First Presbyterian Church of Indian- 
apolis. His membership in the church was 
not like that of some other public men, merely 
honorary and formal. He was thoroughly in- 
terested in the church, had its interests on his 
heart, held himself to a keen responsibility not 
only for attendance on its services, but for 
faithfully fulfilling all his obligations to the 
church. General Harrison could have uttered 



238 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

without any cant or meaningless formality the 
words which often mean nothing, *'I belong to 
the church." 

As is well known, Mr. Harrison was not a 
demonstrative man^ and in his religion as in 
other matters he was inclined to be modest and 
retiring. But the old proverb, "Still water 
runs deep," was true of Benjamin Harrison in 
relation to his devout love for Christ, his 
supreme faith in the Bible as the Word of God, 
and his earnest determination to do all within 
his power to help on the advancement of the 
kingdom of his divine Lord. 

On one occasion General Harrison, stand- 
ing in the vestibule of the church after a ser- 
vice, incidentally overheard a conversation be- 
tween a very bright, keen-brained, young man 
who had attracted his eye and another man 
who had spoken to him about becoming a 
Christian and coming into the church. His ear 
caught the young man's reply, spoken in a 
serious and he thought rather a regretful tone, 
to the effect that he was not able to accept 
Christianity, as there seemed to him insur- 
mountable difficulties in the way of believing 
the Bible to be the Word of God, and as Chris- 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 239 

tianity was founded on that, it did not seem 
possible for him to become a Christian. 

This young man was poor, almost entirely 
unknown in the city, living in a modest room 
in a boarding-house. We can imagine his as- 
tonishment, two or three evenings later, when 
there came a knock at his door, and Benjamin 
Harrison — the most distinguished lawyer in 
Indiana, at that moment a candidate for the 
United States Senate before the legislature 
then in session, an office to which he was 
elected a few days later, and a man frequently 
spoken of as a future President of the United 
States — was shown into his room. General 
Harrison at once made him feel at home, how- 
ever, by frankly telling him that he had acci- 
dentally overheard his conversation at the 
church on the Sunday previous and th?t it had 
greatly interested him for the reason that he 
himself had formerly had the same difficulties, 
they had given him great trouble, and naturally 
he felt a brotherly interest in any young man 
who was troubled in the same way he had been. 

General Harrison followed up this statement 
with the further statement that, having thought 
the matter through to a satisfactory conclusion 



240 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

for himself, until he had rested his faith upon 
the Bible as the Word of God and had proved 
Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour, he had 
thought that perhaps this experience had pecu- 
liarly fitted him to be of some help to another 
man who found himself in a like situation. 

Of course the young man was entirely dis- 
armed, and could not help being softened and 
mellowed into an openness of mind and heart 
to receive teaching under such circumstances. 

With the keen, sharp skill of an able lawyer, 
softened by the kindness of Christian brother- 
hood, Benjamin Harrison drew out all the 
young man's mind and heart on the great sub- 
ject in hand. He soon saw every point of diffi- 
culty; and as they came to the front, one by 
one, with logical clearness he disposed of them, 
never leaving a point until his young friend 
was entirely satisfied that his objection was 
gone. And so they talked, on and on, utterly 
oblivious of time, until at last the young man 
admitted that all his objections had been an- 
swered; that every difficulty had been cleared 
away; and with deep emotion announced his 
faith in Jesus Christ and his determination to 
accept him and serve him as his Lord. 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 241 

When at last the conversation was brought 
to this happy conclusion they arose to their 
feet, and when the General looked at his watch 
he found to his amazement that it was some 
hours past midnight and was nearing the morn- 
ing. So completely given up to the great pur- 
pose of winning this young man to accept 
Christ had been this famous statesman and 
distinguished lawyer, that he had been utterly 
oblivious to the passing of time. All that even- 
ing, for hours, his political friends had been 
searching for him, that they might counsel 
with him regarding his candidacy for the 
United States Senate; but he had been utterly 
forgetful of his own political interests and lost 
in the intense earnestness with which he had 
entered into the spiritual interests of another. 

Soon after the death of President Harrison, 
Dr. W. C. Gray, the veteran editor of The In- 
terior, who had been a school friend of both 
Harrison and his wife, related a very interest- 
ing story of a visit which he paid to the Harri- 
sons while Benjamin Harrison was United 
States Senator and but a little while before 
he was nominated for the Presidency. During 
a conversation Dr. Gray said to him, "Sena- 



242 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

tor, you bear a historic name — historically 
the most eminent of any American citizen; 
you possess abilities which I estimate as equal 
to the best, if not the very best, among Ameri- 
can statesmen. Your record is worthy of 
your name. You live in a doubtful State, 
which you can carry in a Presidential contest. 
On no man does the shadow of the Presidency 
fall so clearly as it does upon you, and yet your 
friends think you are at a disadvantage in one 
particular." And then Dr. Gray referred to 
the magnetic qualities of successful political 
leaders, and especially other statesmen who 
were then aspirants. Of the result of that con- 
versation Dr. Gray says, "In the very kindly 
conversation which followed I discovered that 
he was not troubling himself with ambitious 
aspirations, that at the bottom he was a man of 
humble spirit and yet of a self-respect which 
forbade him to be a courtier even to the Ameri- 
can people — that though he was a great man, 
he was unconsciously great; and though his 
heart was large and generous, he would carry 
it in his bosom and not upon his sleeve. It was 
to me a memorable interview, which filled me 
with deep friendship for him. Boy or man, 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 243 

there was no haughtiness in him, only a natural 
reserve and self-poise. . . . He won his 
great success without the compromise of a 
hair's breadth of his convictions of right and 
duty." 

General Harrison, as he grew in political 
honors and in the regard of the public, did 
what very few public men do — he kept pace in 
his interest in the larger affairs of Christianity 
and the world-wide interests of the great 
branch of the Christian church to which he be- 
longed. In connection with the administration 
of the larger affairs of the Presbyterian 
Church, of which he was the most famous 
member, he frequently occupied a place of hon- 
orable service. He was seen in the meetings of 
the General Assembly and took part in the dis- 
cussions of that great body. He took great in- 
terest in the missionary work of the church, 
both at home and abroad. He was also on the 
Assembly's committee on the revision of the 
Confession of Faith. This committee paid a 
most loving tribute to his memory after his 
death. In the course of that tribute it is said : 
**His appointment as a member of this commit- 
tee was made at a time when he was declining 



244 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

high public and official honors and when he was 
deeply engaged in the solution of questions that 
affected the welfare and peace of nations; but 
he did not hesitate, though at much personal 
sacrifice, to respond to the duty the church of 
his choice and love had laid upon him." 

Two or three years before his death, at a 
time when he was perhaps the most distin- 
guished American citizen living, Mr. Harrison 
identified himself in a most unique way with 
universal Christianity by accepting the invita- 
tion to preside at the Ecumenical Missionary 
Conference held in New York City, beginning 
April 21, 1900. His opening speech was a 
very remarkable production in many ways and 
was full of Christian enthusiasm. Many para- 
graphs in that speech are like windows into the 
devout heart and spiritual quality of the man. 
In the opening of his address he says : 

''Hours for devotional exercise are assigned. 
The greatest need of the foreign field is a re- 
vived, reconsecrated, and unified home church. 
And this conference will be fruitful and suc- 
cessful in proportion as it promotes those ends. 
There will be, I hope, much prayer for an out- 
pouring of God's Spirit." 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 245 

Mr. Harrison's tribute to Jesus as King is 
graphically beautiful. He says : 

"The highest conception that has ever en- 
tered the mind of man is that of God as the 
Father of all men — the one blood — the uni- 
versal brotherhood. It was not evolved^ but 
revealed. The natural man lives to be minis- 
tered unto — he lays his imposts upon others. 
He buys slaves that they may fan him to sleep, 
bring him the jeweled cup, dance before him, 
and die in the arena for his sport. Into such a 
world there came a King 'not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister.' The rough winds 
fanned his sleep; he drank of the mountain 
brook, and made not the water wine for him- 
self; he would not use his power to stay his 
own hunger, but had compassion on the multi- 
tude. Them that he had bought with a great 
price he called no more servants, but friends. 
He entered the bloody arena alone, and, dying, 
broke all chains and brought life and immor- 
tality to light. 

"Here is the perfect altruism ; here the true 
appraisal of men. Ornaments of gold and 
gems, silken robes, houses, lands, stocks and 
bonds — these are tare when men are weighed. 



246 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

Where else is there a scale so true? Where a 
brotherhood so wide and perfect? Labor is 
made noble — the King credits the smallest ser- 
vice. His values are relative; he takes account 
of the per cent, when tribute is brought into his 
treasury. No coin of love is base or small to 
him. The widow's mite he sets in his crown. 
Life is sweetened; the poor man becomes of 
account. Where else is found a philosophy of 
life so sweet and adaptable — a philosophy of 
death so comforting?" 

Later on during the great missionary confer- 
ence, when President McKinley and Governor 
Roosevelt addressed the members, Mr. Harri- 
son in reply uttered this significant paragraph : 
*Tt is reported that the aged German Chancel- 
lor, Prince Hohenlohe, recently said as he 
looked about over the world, its struggles, and 
strifes, and distress, and grief, that it seemed 
to him as if that geological era had returned 
when the saurians, gigantic monsters, walked 
the earth in their devouring forms. He was 
addressing, I think, a meeting of scholars, and 
he turned to scholarship as giving him hope for 
a world that seemed to be greedy for the de- 
struction of its own members. Ah! my 



BENJAMIN HARRISON. 247 

friends, not scholarship, not invention, not any 
of these noble and creditable developments of 
our era — not to these, but to the Word of God 
and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ must 
we turn for the hope that men may be delivered 
from this consuming greed and selfishness." 

But perhaps in the closing words of his final 
address at this remarkable conference Mr. 
Harrison uttered his tenderest Christian testi- 
mony : "We part with you in sorrow, and yet 
bitter as they are, the Christian partings always 
are cheered by the promise of the great gather- 
ing where all who love the Lord shall see each 
other again. We thank you for your gracious 
and instructive words; we thank you for the 
inspiration you have given us; we hope that 
you have caught from our hearts some of the 
love we bear you, and that you will go back to 
the Lord's appointed work stronger for our 
prayers and for our sympathy. 

"And now, as we bring this meeting to a 
close, may I not assure you all that the prayers 
of the Church in America will be offered with 
a frequency and a fervor they have never had 
before and that the pockets and the purses of 
the American people will be opened with a gen- 



^ 



248 RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

erosity they have never known before to con- 
duct this great world work — a work which is 
to bring in the day when the kingdoms of the 
earth shall become the kingdoms of our Lord. 

*'God bless you all, abide with you in your 
places, strengthen your hearts, fill them with 
the converts that he knows so well how to con- 
vert, and give you success in your devoted 
efforts to make known his name to those who 
are in darkness." 

Surely no one can read these utterances 
without feeling the pulsations of a great warm 
heart full of love for Christ. 



THE END. 



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